THE RUMOUR
Bart Luirink, article printed in the Haagse Post/De Tijd, 11th November 1993
(Translation)
Title: The Rumour: Berend Schuitema - Anti-Apartheid fighter or a double Spy ?
Was the founder of the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement actually, for years a double spy for the South African Apartheid Regime?
Or was it a successful attempt by the Regime to discredit him?
The search for an answer to this question leads to a remarkable meeting.
In 1969 Berend Schuitema fled from South Africa and landed in Amsterdam after a charge was brought against him for contravening the so-called Immorality Act. His 'crime' was love across the colour line. The incident leading to this charge against him took place in the Western Transvaal town Klerksdorp - a heartland area for Apartheid to reign. A system which the young mining engineer Berend Schuitema started doubting in the preceding years. A man who was shocked by the suicide of his older brother after losing his will to live while doing military service in the Apartheid army. Also, his conversations and contacts with Mozambican miners around Frelimo and memories of strikes had him thinking.
In Amsterdam Schuitema tried to become involved in the then existing Comite Zuid Afrika, the first Anti Apartheid grouping in the Netherlands which had, amongst others, members like Ed van Thijn, the rev. Buskes, professor Albeda and Henk Vonhoff - all staunch liberals of their day.
But Berend Schuitema found this group too ambiguous about armed struggle and too confused about ideas which he was bringing - economic sanctions against Apartheid in South Africa. In addition they also did not totally trust him. This appears out of archive material and correspondence between the Comite Zuid Afrika and the International Defence and Aid Fund. "Keep a distance on him until we know more about him" , was the advice from London.
In 1971 Schuitema founded his own organization and called it the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement (AABN). The group soon established a prominence in the Dutch press by disrupting sports events in which South African teams participated. There were also sensational exposures of Dutch firms trading with the illegal Rhodesian regime which were carried extensively in the international press. It was Schuitema's driving force and total dedication to the work of the AABN, of which he was founding General Secretary, which won it the respect of the radical student movement as well as the Broad Solidarity Movement for Vietnam.
The AABN grew out to be one of the most powerful third world solidarity movements in Europe.
But, eleven years after his flight from South Africa, in 1980, the South African newspaper Sunday Times, in a massive front page display under the heading Another Spy Confesses, made the sensational accusation that the man who founded the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement during his exile was a spy working for the Apartheid regime. The story was carried extensively in the Dutch press and caused a rift amongst AAM groups. There were those who were convinced that the allegations were true beyond any doubt. There were those who refused to accept what had in any case emanated from the South African press and held the allegations to be a pack of lies.
Since then speculation has been rife. Rumours abounded and there was no shortage of comprehensive conspiracy theories in what, for convenience sake, I call the 'Schuitema Affair'. Inspite of the fact that the matter gives a picture both of the dirty tricks of the South African security establishment as well as a controversy within the African National Congress and the AABN as a whole.
The latest chapter in the Schuitema affair is the mid-November appearance of a novel authored by the ex-lover of Berend Schuitema and currently chairperson of the AABN, Ms Connie Braam. The title she has given to her book, 'De Bokslachter', is a name existent in the Klerskdorp district depicting a poor white community who were looked down upon by more privileged whites as if in fact they were blacks.
The novel tells the story of Schuitema, an Afrikaner, a white and a fanatical anti-Apartheid fighter in search for his own identity. It is Braam's second book after she made her debut last year with Operation Vula which described her involvement in underground resistance work in South Africa. Ironically enough it was the involvement of Schuitema in another, earlier underground action and the source of what he called "fictions and slanders", which haunts him from then to this very day.
In 1973 Schuitema was brought into contact with the South African poet Breyten Breytenbach, through the mediation of executive members of the AABN. This exiled poet, living in Paris, invited Schuitema to participate in an underground resistance organization code named 'Okhela'. The handful of involved militants had in mind the establishment of a network of contacts both within and outside of South Africa, and to work as a white wing under the umbrella of the ANC. They felt unsure about their roles as white participation in the liberation movement was as yet then not a resolved matter. Also, Schuitema and Breytenbach wished to appeal to the white nationalist traditions with the initiative. The struggle of the Afrikaner, in their view, could be developed as an extension of the Boer resistance in the war of liberation against British Imperialism.
In 1975 Breytenbach departed for a secret mission to South Africa in the framework of the Okhela programme. He utilized a French passport in the name of Christiaan Galaska for the occasion. The aim was to develop on contacts made during previous missions, in order to develop a structure from which to work from within the country and from where white anti-apartheid resistance could be stimulated.
Presumably both the South African security police and the Bureau for State Security (BOSS) were aware of Breytenbach's plans already before he departed. They prepared for his arrest in a well planned strategy to allow Breytenbach to move around freely and then pounce on him in a most spectacular manner. He was allowed such freedom for a number of weeks in order to get hold of the whole network after determining its exact extent.
Schuitema, who moved into the country separate from Breytenbach in a parallel mission, eluded the trap and managed to escape. Presumably the security people were unaware of Schuitema's presence in the country. After eluding the trap he got across the border in Botswana, from there made his way to Lusaka, where ANC HQ were located, and from there to Algiers. From Algiers he let the AABN know that he had escaped and that he would be in Amsterdam within a few weeks.
News of Schuitema's escape was received with varying feelings - relief because he had not been arrested, but also irritation at the failure of the operation and the fact that most people in the movement were not informed of his involvement.
Back in South Africa Breytenbach was brought to trial after a very short period of detention. In this show trial he tendered his apologies to J B Vorster which caused a lot of confusion with his friends abroad. ANC leaders called the underground initiative an unmitigated disaster. The objectives of Okhela, i.e. setting up a white wing under the umbrella of the ANC, was seen to be in contradiction to the non-racial principles of the liberation movement. On top of this it also appeared as if members of Okhela had little time for the alliance between the ANC and the SACP. ANC leaders who had encouraged the formation of Okhela were sidelined and even expelled from the organization. Okhela was sunk in disgrace.
Also within the AABN the shock waves were felt. It was the mid-seventies, a time when ideological conflicts in political movements were fought out with vehemence and to the bitter end. And so also in the case of Schuitema. Connie Braam, whose relationship with Schuitema had already suffered shipwreck a year earlier, openly stated that his involvement with Okhela was irreconcilable with his executive functions with a group like the AABN. A majority chose for Braam. After the conflict, which was fought out in the offices of the Anne Frank House, where Schuitema worked part-time, Braam says that their love was "extinguished in all respects".
In the aftermath of the conflict suspicions were aroused that there may have been more to Schuitema's involvement. Was it not remarkable that with the arrest of Breytenbach, and the entire Okhela network, that he had managed to escape ? Was this the work of a far fetched conspiracy theory ? Whatever the case - the rumour quickly did the rounds in the broader Anti Apartheid Movement.
Five years after his spiritual child, the Dutch Anti apartheid Movement ,which he had founded, rejected him, the Sunday Times came up with its story in which Schuitema was described as a collaborator of the Apartheid regime. The newspaper stated that Schuitema had worked for BOSS and had been tasked to follow the movements of Breytenbach and report these back.. The newspaper based its allegations on anonymous sources within the security establishment. Many ofcourse treated such allegations with circumspection, coming as it did from Apartheid security sources and in the South African press.
It became different for many when Breytenbach , after his release and in his book True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, in which he described his prison experiences, said it was Schuitema who had betrayed him. Breytenbach also expressed this suggestion to Adriaan van Dis in an interview in a Dutch newspaper, the NRC. As van Dis was involved for a blue Monday with Okhela, this suggestion was taken up seriously.
The defected spy from BOSS, Gordon Winter, was the next to feed the rumour. In a special translation of his book Inside Boss into Dutch (1984), Winter added a chapter to cast light on the activity of spies in the Netherlands. He mentioned Schuitema by name. These accusations were further thickened by being carried in a series of articles in other papers - the Volkskrant and the Nieuwe Linie. Esau du Plessis of the Boycott Outspan Action and Sietse Bosgra of the Komite Zuidelijk Afrika were convinced that Schuitema was a spy for Pretoria.
But Braam's AABN, indeed still ideologically embroiled with its founder, kept protesting Schuitema's innocence.
The contact between Braam and Schuitema was only restored early this year. They held discussions for weeks on end. Discussions which produced the information to write the novel about Schuitema and the formative years of the AABN. About the years when he worked with commitment and dedication. Braam says - "no, it was not difficult to restore the contact with Berend. Between him and the majority of the AABN problems once did arise but the story about his being a secret agent was one that was never believed in the AABN. That was a smear. A smear that was perpetuated by his own people, Afrikaners, to destroy him more effectively than could be done with imprisonment or torture. For doing that would have made a hero out of him".
But inspite of this Braam felt no inclination in her new book to prove that Schuitema's allegedly being a spy rested on rumour. Why not ? Answer - "I wanted to write about his life story and reconstruct it to the point of 1975." She continues - "to understand his psyche, for those who experienced his frustrations and his desperate attempts to belong somewhere, as well as his sometimes madness".
Schuitema himself also did not do much to work on clearing his own name. Thus he went into the South African Consulate in New York where he saw 'verligte' allies for his already discredited ideas. They merely reported back to their superiors on his movements. In 1980 he says that he was morally exhausted and feelings of remorse and a flickering hope to spark off ideas for a radically left counter force to extremist rightwing reaction drove him to return to South Africa and stand trial. Shortly before his return he asked his girlfriend, Louise Stack, to approach the International University Exchange fund in Geneva for legal support and to take its then deputy director, Craig Williamson, into confidence on the matter. Stack then in turn informed Williamson who at that time was known as a fanatical ANC supporter. From time to time Schuitema was able to fall back on Williamson for funds.
A few weeks before the slander on Schuitema was printed in the Sunday Times there was another front page story which unmasked Williamson as a South African spy. For five years he was able to keep the South African Government informed on the comings and goings of South African exiles, as well on as the work of the European Anti Apartheid Movements. Williamson scuttled back to South Africa where he was further involved in planning death squads which were sent out against ANC communities in neighboring states. With these actions tens of ANC members lost their lives.
A clear answer as to Schuitema's alleged collaboration never came. Attempts to find answers in the archives and correspondences of the AAM's produced heaps of information, but no answer. When a question was asked about Schuitema there would be a vague answer - "somewhere in Africa". Or - "he is involved with something like a Christian sect".
In contradiction to its name, East London is a South African harbour city. Here, after endless telephonades, I managed to get hold of Berend Schuitema. He awaited me at the airport - "I am Berend", he said in a sonorous voice and shook my hand. We walked to his motor car and everything I had heard about him checked - his bearing, manner and lofty appearance. The airport had everything to it of the PW Botha era of total onslaught. Everywhere there were posters captioned "look and live" - with collages of hand granades and land mines.
'The ANC is now a legal organization' Schuitema said - "but we are still looked upon by the general public as terrorists". He drove me to his plaas - a sort of farm. It was in ruins and there were signs of reconstruction with meager funds from the Canadian Development Fund. The austere living conditions were more than compensated for by the very beautiful surrounding landscape. "It is the fourth time that I have tried to establish a rural co-operative something like this", he says - "the first time was in the sixties. But when the authorities discovered that I had a type of socialist commune in mind and not the implementation of the laws of baassskap, they put an end to it. After my return to South Africa I started afresh, in the Mooiplaas area towards the Transkei border. I got spies sent in to sabotage the project from within. They even sent a white woman who was supposed to seduce and spy on me. This only became apparent once she had already moved in with me. After that they arrested the whole crowd of cooperateurs in one blow and so intimidated them that I was left isolated with them refusing to have anything to do with me. It became a terrible mess".
In the days of discussion which followed Schuitema trekked through his years. Endless walks that he recalled while pacing his prison cell, while in detention after his return. In solitary confinement he would pace them out - Amsterdam, London, New York, Algiers, Paris.
After three months of solitary confinement came his sudden release and shortly after that the slander in the Sunday Times. Then soon the article of Adriaan van Dis interviewing Breytenbach after his release. Then Breytenbach's book, then later the book of Gordon Winter.
There followed a further escape - to newly independent Zimbabwe where he and Louise Stack set up a solidarity committee for the Irish hunger strikers around Bobby Sands. Shortly after this Schuitema was deported by the Zimbabwean government back to South Africa.
Deserted by all because they believed in the slander of the Sunday Times !
He started drinking heavily and almost killed himself in a motor car accident. After languishing for months he awoke from a terrible nightmare and sought solace in reading the Bible. Schuitema saw the light and soon found himself the head of a group with a name that can only come up in South Africa - Comrades for Christ. It was the same grouping of farm workers of the cooperative with a socialist motivation from the Bible. "I am now a preacher, and active member of the ANC and was elected to the regional leadership of the SACP".
I ask - "but, whatever you say, everyone deserted you". He remains mum. He is comfortable with the fact that rumours without fact fade away. After a long silence he responds - "because it never was true. A few weeks after the Sunday Times article I managed to extract a correction from the Sunday Times. However, it was, I think, on page thirteen and only about an inch in length. And as far as Breyten is concerned - he was misled. Sietse Bosgra sent me a letter of apology".
The question now is - who actually stood to gain by the rumour spread against Schuitema ? In his case it is without a doubt the Apartheid regime. That Williamson was working for the regime as a spy is beyond all doubt - he was an officer of the South African security police. And he also has no reason to deny this. Even though Williamson today says he is fully behind a new South Africa. A few weeks before my meeting with him he received a new resident in his Houghton neighborhood - Nelson Mandela. "Our President", he says. Open heartedly and without shame he speaks about his time in Europe, his meetings with Schuitema and with Stack, his own exposure and his return to South Africa. "When I returned I immediately went on holiday in Cape town. There I read the story about Schuitema in the Sunday times. I was not aware about anything before hand but I thought to myself - 'what are they now doing?'. Yes, it was the security police who had arranged the Sunday Times publication".
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