This book is about how anti-apartheid activists from the United Kingdom successfully exploited the logic of racism to undermine apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was a system that was based completely on a racial logic that did not countenance equality and the coexistence of people from different racial groups. Those who fought against it believed differently. They promoted the idea of racial equality and they acted and operated on that belief. It is significantly noteworthy that the non-racial, anti-apartheid activists studied and exploited the racist thinking that is inherent in apartheid. This they used to undermine and fight apartheid. One of these cases is the involvement of white activists from the Western world who, in operations against apartheid, used their skin color as a passport to circumvent the apartheid state’s security arrangements.
Apartheid guaranteed white privileges and assumed white people were pro-apartheid. White anti-apartheid activists were called upon use their whiteness to deflect suspicion that they were engaged in activities to undermine and defeat apartheid. The group in the 1960s were, organized mainly around the British Communist Party in London, and in 1980s, they were organized mainly through the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement.
The task of these activists was made easier by the color of their skin. Apartheid, like any racist doctrine, presumed that all white people were natural allies hence suspicion was very low when dealing with “Caucasian” visitors from abroad. As long as they refrained from drawing attention to themselves – dressed, spoke, and behaved in the approved manner – they could get away with anything. (Ronnie Kasrils in Keable, 2012: 3)
These activists also knew the importance of their race to the success of the mission. One of them recalls that “I was supposed to keep to myself, talk to no one, blend in, stick to the routine and rely on my white skin privilege” (Schechter in Keable, 2012: 56).
There was an incident where not behaving in a race-conscious way or understanding the apartheid racial classification nearly scuppered a mission. That was when two of these activists took two “colored” lady friends to a whites-only restaurant. When the police came into the restaurant the ladies froze. Later the women explained that if the police had asked for identity documents they would have been in serious trouble. The two activists realized that they also would have been in trouble with their “handler”, Ronnie Kasrils, for “unknowingly compromising the mission” (Sean Hosey in Keable, 2012: 280). The dinner was a serious mistake – white activists had to stick with white people in order to fit in with the expectations of apartheid South Africa.
Many of the activists tell of having to grit their teeth through racist conversations just to make a success of their missions. They say there were many times during their visits to South Africa when they felt “extremely uncomfortable” about their “privileged position and having to act the role of confident white supremacist[s]” (Graeme Whyte in Keable, 2012: 256). This was the reason some activists refused to stay long in the country.
In the spirit of the white superiority complex, ordinary white South Africans maintained solidarity with people who had come in opposition to their racist way of life. They could not believe that white people could be anti-apartheid. When Mike Milotte and John Rose were on their way to Swaziland and they wanted water they stopped and went to ask for some from a farmhouse. The family of Afrikaners invited them in and offered tea and cake. The family was very friendly and quite astonished to see a couple of English tourists in such a “remote and uninviting location”. Milotte and Rose left the farm with bottles of water and a supply of cake (Mike Milotte in Keable, 2012: 100). Their skin color had opened the heart of a conservative farming family.
These white activists got involved mainly at the behest of the African National Congress (ANC) but, as the organization’s Pallo Jordan recalls, the struggle against apartheid was one of only two movements that won “virtual universal support among all democrats” (Jordan in the foreword of Keable, 2012). The group that the ANC recruited in the 1960s was organized mainly, although not exclusively, around the British Communist Party in London but there were also others who were not necessarily communist but hated apartheid (Pallo Jordan in Keable, 2012: foreword, p. x). In the 1980s, there were people from different countries who got involved and it was “the earlier propaganda activities” that opened up the road for all the future clandestine operations that utilized courageous internationalists from many different countries (Ronnie Kasrils in Keable, 2012: 2). ANC senior operatives focused on the usefulness of race in planning these operations as they believed that whiteness brought with it an advantage in South Africa, and in southern Africa more widely, and the ANC had to use that to its advantage.
Repression and the propaganda battle (the late 1960s and early 1970s)
The 1960s and early 1970s were a bleak period for the ANC and its allies. The organization was banned and the liberation struggle had been smashed inside South Africa (Ronnie Kasrils in Keable 2012: Introduction). Many ANC leaders were in prison and those who evaded arrest were exiled in countries that were far from the South African borders. Inside the country, there was no discernible voice of protest from the liberation movement. The masses were discouraged as they had seen their leaders sentenced to many years, and some to life, in prison. The apartheid state had succeeded in communicating the message that it had obliterated any form of resistance. From the side of those anti-apartheid activists who were in exile, there was a need to re-establish contact with people at “home” and communicate the message that the ANC was still alive and the struggle continued. They roped in internationalists and one of them remembers their role as being to “keep the then-banned ANC’s capacity to communicate visible and alive in one of the darkest days of apartheid” (Danny Schechter in Keable 2012: 54). It was to be concealed that those who were involved in these missions had come from abroad “to make it appear that, despite the repression, the internal organization was still intact and capable of mounting such a daring operation” (Graeme Whyte in Keable 2012: 255). The reality was that ordinary black people were cowed and their organizations were almost destroyed inside the country. Mike Milottee, who went on a mission to South Africa with John Rose in 1970 to explode leaflet bombs and play a tape of Mandela’s speech in public, recalls that all the black people they encountered acted in a subservient way and referred to them as “baas” (master). He notes that the hotel porters who carried their “subversively laden suitcases” to their room even walked out backward, “as royal servants” must do so as not to show their backs to their monarch. It was “grotesque and depressing, but we had to behave as if we took all this as natural and normal, as if we were happy to belong to the master race. We couldn’t react in any way that might attract attention” (Mike Milotte in Keable, 2012: 97). There was a degree of subterfuge as the ANC sought to create the impression it still had the capacity to challenge the apartheid state inside South Africa. The non-racist outsiders had to pretend to agree with racism so as perform operations that would strengthen the illusion of ANC prowess and inspire black South Africans to rise again.
Of the non-South Africans who left their countries to play a role in the South African liberation struggle a former leader of the ANC, Pallo Jordan, makes the point that (Pallo Jordan in foreword to Keable, 2012):
To this effort, they brought their time, their skills, their knowledge, but most of all their undoubted courage. They were drawn from different backgrounds and political formations on the left. What they shared was a readiness to risk life and limb in the struggle of another country. Working in self-contained cells that were unaware of each other, under the guidance of a small unit operating out of London, these dedicated women and men helped the liberation movement to rebuild its capacity inside South Africa at a time when repression had all but extinguished the embers of resistance.
The propaganda campaign seems to have revolved around an ANC and South African Communist Party (SACP) leader, Ronnie Kasrils. Kasrils was exiled to London and was an adult student at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the late 1960s. He recruited many of those who were to undertake the propaganda mission from the ranks of the Young Communist League (YCL) or British Communist Party and people who were in the company of these members or in the Socialist Society. Pete Smith refers to his missions to South Africa as the “YCL trips”. Others went on a mission once or twice in the 1960s and went back to the UK and carried on with their lives. There were a few who kept on coming back, becoming something akin to full-time revolutionaries.
Many of these people were approached to go on holiday to South Africa carrying suitcases with false bottoms. In those false bottoms were propaganda leaflets that were to be exploded in areas with many black people. The explosion was not dangerous as “the explosive material was little more than medium fireworks strength, enough to lift a small platform of leaflets from a bucket 30 feet or so in the air” (Sean Hosey in Keable 2012: 279). Black people were the target of the message and it was hoped that they would pick up these leaflets. Apartheid made it easier to get many black people to collect the leaflets without being immediately apprehended because of the segregation and the racialized socioeconomic conditions. Black people were forced to congregate together. These activists also unfurled ANC banners where they would be visible.
Sarah Griffith and Ted Parker recalled that (Keable, 2012: 73):
The mission was to get ANC propaganda material into Johannesburg and to deploy it in various ways. The material was to be transported in the false bottoms of our suitcases and then we were to post two hundred leaflets to known ANC sympathizers and release ANC banners and more leaflets at a pre-determined time at the city centre.
Others had to find ways of loudly broadcasting taped ANC messages so that people on the streets could listen to them. To get this done they had to behave like white South Africans who were mainly racist and believed they had a God-given right to be part of the “master-race”.
When two of these activists found themselves in a situation that threatened them with exposure – a policeman was about to remove an envelope with subversive material from their car – one of them acted like a white tourist would in South Africa, enabling them to avoid arrest (Keable, 2012: 98):
But in a flash John brought his elbow down sharply on the cop’s forearm, pinning it to the window frame. “We’re British tourists”. John’s voice was imperious and angry. The cop froze. He looked from John to me. I tried to smile and nod, but can’t imagine what it came out as. “I’m sorry sir,” came the cop’s humble response.
The cop explained why he had wanted to search the car, but called off the search. Their race had ensured that they were treated differently.
In the case of Sarah Griffith and Ted Parker who left London in 1967 to set off leaflets in Johannesburg and raise ANC banners (Ted Parker in Keable, 2012: 74): “the difference in treatment based on race became evident immediately … The white travellers were treated with courtesy and deference although the customs officer appeared to think seriously about asking me to open my bulging case before waving me through.”
Parker also recalls an incident after placing an ANC flag that was to be unfurled on top of a City Treasury department. While walking down from the roof to the floor below, he encountered someone looking like a senior manager on the stairs who emerged from an office and looked directly at him. He was holding his camera and made sure the manager saw it “as I gave him my broadest smile and proceeded briskly to the next stairwell. He smiled back and went into a neighboring office as I left the building” (Ted Parker in Keable, 2012: 77). Only a white person would have been treated with such a lack of suspicion. A black British tourist would likely have been treated very differently.
Danny Schechter’s analysis of his white privilege is more direct. Schechter was involved in the civil rights movement in America before coming to study at the London School of Economics. He first went on a propaganda mission into South Africa in 1967. Discussing what contributed to his mission’s success Schechter recalls that it was more because he was “just another white person in what was then a white city with ‘non-Europeans,’ restricted as to where they could live, and even sit, As much as I hated to admit it, I blended in as just another ‘whitey’” (Keable, 2012: 55).
This was to be the experience of the propaganda mission campaigners who were recruited in London. They were treated with respect and were given the benefit of doubt even when they made mistakes in their mission. It was thought inconceivable that “normal” white people could be subversive. The white activists had to stomach apartheid and pretend to enjoy it.
Katherine Levine went to Lusaka and Botswana on a mission with Laurence Harris in 1971. One day they went to Chobe River Lodge in Rhodesia. Her recollection of the place is tempered with her revulsion for racism (Katherine Levine in Keable, 2012: 111):
Chobe River lodge was an idyllic holiday place if you were white. It was owned by a white racist South African, full of oppressive bonhomie towards us. Almost the hardest part of the whole mission was the friendly facade we had to maintain towards him. His assumption that we would obviously agree with his vile opinion served to provide me with a sharp daily reminder of the grossness of apartheid, and probably helped to firm my resolve to complete our mission in support of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
It took maturity and commitment to the anti-apartheid cause for these white internationalists to pretend that they saw nothing wrong with racism and a lot of discipline to restrain themselves from exposing their true feelings. That would have jeopardized the more important objective of helping to defeat apartheid.
The worth and risk of the contribution
The campaigns that are dealt with here contributed to the ultimate victory of the anti-apartheid struggle. Sending a message of hope to adherents of liberation organizations whose existence as viable forces was, for all intents and purposes, snuffed out inside South Africa was a valuable contribution and influenced the rising up of the new generation of revolutionaries.
This is in no way is to diminish the contribution of the masses of South Africans who risked life and limb in daily struggles. But it recognizes the contribution of white internationalists who, despite having nothing personal to gain when that struggle succeeded, still took the risks. The trips to South Africa and the frontline states were dangerous. The apartheid state viewed anyone who dared challenge apartheid, in any way, as a legitimate target for punishment, including prison and death.
However, everything in apartheid South Africa was colored by racism. The white internationalists were reminded that their skin colour could also help them in the event the mission went wrong (Graeme Whyte in Keable, 2012: 252):
I knew that I would face a long time in prison if I were caught. I also knew that being interrogated by the police would be a very unpleasant experience. Ronnie [Kasris] explained this to me, but he also told me that the treatment of political prisoners was as racist as every other area of South African life and that I would not be treated as badly as a black prisoner. I held on to that and told myself that it wouldn’t compare with being arrested by the Gestapo and that I would probably cope.
(This review article was enabled by the support of the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (NHISS) in South Africa.)