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Sunday, March 10, 2013

Summary notes AABN Sanctions Campaigning


ECONOMIC SANCTIONS


·         The Zephyr Report 1973

     The whites in Rhodesia did a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain in November 1965.  While South Africa did not recognize the rebel state, it gave support to circumvent and undermine mandatory sanctions called by the Security Council of the United Nations. By the time the AABN was established sanctions were having no effect whatsoever and continued to be bust despite tightening up with new resolutions for mandatory sanctions. Sanctions were a joke. This was highly concerning to the new movement in the Netherlands. If mandatory sanctions do not work on Rhodesia, which was implementing Apartheid on the pattern of its Southern neighbour, then what chance would there be for any sanctions against South Africa? Also disconcerting was the fact that mandatory sanctions against rebel Rhodesia was the first time that the United Nations had done this during the post WW2 period. There was thus a considerable international lobby group interested in seeing sanctions work against Rhodesia internationally.
    
     Discussions were then held with an independent Rhodesia Committee, which had existed in the Netherlands since the United Nations called for sanctions in 1967. While it was doing a fantastic job in publicizing the Rhodesian crisis, not much was being done apart from lobbying among members of parliament of the Dutch Government and ensuring media coverage, much the same in other countries including the UK. The emphasis, internationally among Anti Apartheid Movements, spurred on by the British AAM, refocused action that needed to be taken against South Africa under the slogan, “bust the sanctions busters”. 
 
     At first the Task Team set up with members from both the AABN and the Rhodesia Committee had nothing to work with and there was nothing suggesting that identifying sanctions busters, getting enough information to call for an investigation from the Dutch Economic Intelligence (Ekonomische Controle Dienst, ECD) would be an easy task. Sporadically the international press confirmed sanctions busting on a massive scale, but there was never any proof to warrant investigations in the Netherlands or anywhere else.

     The Task Team met once every week. It included two lawyers who did research with the Dutch Department of Finance and came up with statistics denominated in Rhodesian Dollars, indicating that there was definitely trade between the Netherlands and Rhodesia. Not only that, but officially sanctioned by the Dutch Reserve Bank as well. This information was taken to the ECD, which refused to institute an investigation. The magnitude of the figures was then investigated and it was found that it was far larger than the permitted trade in educational and medical supplies that fell outside of the mandatory loop of sanctions.

     The Task Team met for many months and while gradually getting a picture on the scale and nature of sanctions busting, we were no closer with a solution what to do about these observations. It was difficult keeping the Task Team charged with enthusiasm and endless exhortations from my side. However, with each meeting a different plan was made. If there was sanctions busting and these showed up on official trade statistics in Rhodesian Dollars, then there had to be banks and commercial forms involved. We then started asking around among acquaintances working in banks if they had ever set eyes on the Rhodesian Dollar sign, and if so, to please inform.

     Eventually we hit bingo. One of the Task Team members happened to be chatting to an unknown person in a bar at night. This guy was working at Van Lanschot Bank, just around the corner from the AABN offices. Soon we got to see documents, invoices, banking instructions and even bills of lading. It appeared that the trade being uncovered was not bulk, but a massive array of retail-type transactions arranged through a few firms, which we could then investigate. Almost every country in the world was involved.
  
          It took us more investigation to locate the hub of the trade, which we found to be a trader located in expensive offices in an expensive suburb of Amsterdam. He was into the international oil and chemical trade. This firm, it transpired, had set up an internal operation code named “Zephyr”, specifically designed for busting of international sanctions against Rhodesia. Investigating all avenues it was discovered that this very same Zephyr had already been investigated and charged in a court of law and found guilty for breaking a trade embargo on Poland. So this Zephyr had vast experience in contraband trade. We had the impression that it was because of the breaking of an embargo on an USSR ally that made the ECD so keen and hasty in making of Zephyr an international example. Other firms we exposed breaking sanctions against Rhodesia were ignored by the ECD even though the volume and proof of trade was far greater.

     An action plan was then designed to take our investigative work further, expose and bust Zephyr’s sanctions busting network in its entirety. The Task Team was expanded to do things such as keeping the Zephyr offices under surveillance, and to put it mildly, access proof via unconventional means. We had one team of about 10 people, mostly elderly women from churches who used to volunteer services to the old CZA as envelope lickers, to lay out snippets of torn and soiled papers and unrelated documents to eventually map up the scale and extent of its illicit trade with Rhodesia. This operation took place every night in the basement boardroom of the Anna Frank Foundation. 

     This unorthodox research showed us that there was anything up to 100 separate transactions being done involving up to 20 countries a day for supplying of retail goods to Rhodesia. These included expensive wines, mustards, Marmite, children’s toys, spare parts for motor vehicles, Christmas decorations, to name but a few that come to mind. And at the same time we were working on our own “production figures” – per day our “productivity” was full documentary proof of at least 10 transactions, which could be exposed in the press all over Europe. 

     Initially the ECD was not prepared to investigate, let alone prosecute on the basis of the proof we put in their hands. Ironically they demanded to know where and how we got the information from. This we could not do. Nor did we think it “politically correct” to tell them. But the alternative route was to expose transactions on a daily basis in the press and to shame the Dutch government into action. Sometimes the morning press exposed a transaction while the goods with the supplier. This cat and mouse play continued for a bout a year and produced heaps of media coverage all over Europe. Eventually, through intervention of the PvdA the ECD was tasked to take our proof at face value and prepare its report. In early Zephyr and its holding company were prosecuted and sentenced to the paying of stiff fines.

     Finally, soon after the trial and sentencing of the culprit a comprehensive report was compiled under the title The Zephyr Conspiracy and forwarded to the UN.  

·         The Tobacco Report – 1974

     Tobacco was Rhodesia’s lifeline export. What is more, its quality and type were always reducible to indicate its source of origin. The trade figures that we had accessed from the Dutch Finance Ministry nowhere mentioned “tobacco” but it was a safe guess that Rhodesian tobacco was coming through European harbors, principally Hamburg and Rotterdam in large quantities.

     Much of the groundwork had already been done by the Task Team, which first was working on Zephyr, and gradually shifted the focus to tobacco. The same modus operandi kicked in by first locating a bank where transactions for Rhodesian tobacco were handled. This presented no great problem as a source within Rhodesia had offered information on the banking side in sanctions busting in general. The source, a Tony Kirk, made contact with us through an intermediary in London. Such sources came at random and sometimes turned out to be frauds. The thing is that the more information that got published about AABN busting the sanctions busters, the more informants there were ready to come out of the woodwork. In any case, Tony Kirk wished to spill the beans on the Rhodesian bank he was working for, and this put us onto the Dutch banker, Mees en Hope.

     After we did the honors and investigated Mees en Hope with all our tried methods.  We got documentation linking the bank to a number of tobacco importers in Rotterdam. In Rotterdam we found the scene much more secure than we found in Amsterdam with Zephyr. Probably this was for obvious reasons that a port environment had to be secure and under intensive state surveillance to prevent contraband trading in general. Much like an airport is more difficult to move through than the candy store on the street corner.

     By the time we got into investigating the tobacco trade in Rotterdam we were finding a growing shortage of militants willing, able and who have the time available to do the work. New avenues opened up with trade unionists willing to help, more tips came in that needed to be investigated, and we needed more people to do extended duties such as keeping contact with contacts in places like Rotterdam. To solve these problems Johnny Makatini agreed to deploy an MK Comrade (code purposes this text, MZ) from Algiers to liaise with a Rotterdam Harbor unionist on a daily basis.

     The work on Rotterdam, Hamburg and to a lesser extent in Rouen, meant keeping abreast of shipping news and plotting the routes of all ships coming from Beira, which was the main port for export of Rhodesian tobacco. This work was done at the AABN offices in Amsterdam, and once a week these were picked up by MZ to pass these on to our main harbor contact in the union. MZ would then report back to us with bills of lading indicating which ships came in with tobacco on board.

     Although eventually through our media and parliamentary work we were able to stop Rhodesian tobacco passing through Rotterdam harbor, we were not able to get an ECD investigation and prosecution. A comprehensive report was made for the UN. Interesting is that the keeping track of shipping to and from South Africa became a model approach, which was later adopted by other groups. In Holland there existed a Shipping Research Bureau to the last days of Apartheid.

     The combination of our Zephyr and Tobacco Reports left an imprint on banking research as well. Based on the data we produced with Dutch and English Banks involved with Rhodesian trade, a separate Anti Apartheid organization was set up in the UK called End Loans to South Africa (ELTSA).

     While the Tobacco Report appeared in 1973 but 1974 proved to be much more interesting for more such work. I was invited to London by Ethel de Keyser, of the British AAM to give a talk on the Tobacco Report. I spent a few days in London, for a workshop on sanctions busting in general, and the political outlook for South Africa in particular. Ruth First was at this workshop and made a remark, which to this day has been lost on many people attending the workshop. Ruth made special reference to an article written by the then editor of The Economist, Norman McCrae. He had written a special report on South Africa and come out with the conclusion that a spontaneous eruption of black school kids was waiting to walk away from the blackboards. She told the gathering that this remark had changed her perception about McCrae, if not The Economist. The observation and Ruth picking it up had a prophetic resound as two years later the children of Soweto went into revolt

·         Sanctions and the Trade Unions - 1974

     "The Trade Union/Corporations Task Team is well networked with trade unions, and assisted the Industrial Union of the NVV to establish a solidarity fund for Namibian workers. The main activity of this Task Team was to push through with the program established at a Rhodesia Sanction Seminar held in late 1974, which was attended by Sanctions Commission of the UN, and components of the AAM from other countries". (TNI Documentation, 1974)

     The 1974 conference on sanctions against Rhodesia was held at the University of Amsterdam. The AABN and the Transnational Institute organized the conference jointly. Attending the conference were members of both liberation Zimbabwe liberation movements, ZANU and ZAPU.

     Present at the conference were members of the British AAM, including Abdul Minty who took exception to the main theme that sanctions be considered as a trade unuion supported and implemented programme as ancillary to armed struggle. This conference was the first of its kind and we drew a large number of militants who furthermore came out with radical themes. From Denmark there was a radical group in total support of the theme and remarking that the Organization of African Union as a neo-colonial institution. 

     The ZANU representative kept much to himself as at that time most of the international work was in the hands of ZAPU. Herbert Chitepo, for example, was well known in Amsterdam and standard-bearer for ZANU. However after his assassination ZANU maintained a much lower profile abroad and with solidarity movements. The relationship with ZAPU was more trusted throughout. We presented the ZAPU representative with a remarkable present. Philemon Makonese was given a full reconnaissance report on Beit Bridge including an engineer’s evaluation indicating how the bridge could most successfully be demolished.

     The plan to do reconnaissance work on the Beit Bridge was started in Algiers, where Breytenbach, Makatini and I had extended discussions with the FLN, some Palestinian groups and some people who were working with Curiel. The point under discussion was how to develop sanctions as a weapon in the hands of the liberation movement rather than the traditional approach pushing for sanctions in the media and at the diplomatic level, which in the end had the potential of the weapon being handled by the financial institutions against the liberation movements. To avoid this trade union solidarity was centrally important.

     The idea was that the concept of sanctions should be broadened to include acts of economic attrition. Blowing up the Beit Bridge for example would have complicated South Africa’s supply of oil to Rhodesian. Many took exception to this approach. At the Amsterdam conference Abdul Minty poured scorn on the idea. However it was becoming ever more clear to us that even in the case of sanctions against Rhodesia the Western countries were adopting a sort of strategic stand off sothat in the event of the regime in Salisbury collapsing they had all the cards needed for a negotiated end to the liberation war in hand.

     At that stage it was in any case clear to us that sanctions busting was part of the strategic plan of British intelligence. The Affretair saga proved the point. Affretair is today Zimbabwe’s official cargo airliner. I was first made aware of Affretair via a call from a Sunday Times (London) journalist. The Sunday Times had a picture plastered over the front page with a story that even though it was known to be flying goods in contravention of mandatory UN sanctions, the British government refused to impound the aircraft and prosecute the pilots, owners and traders. 

     With this embarrassing exposure Affretair rerouted its flights from Heathrow to Schiphol, Amsterdam. The question from the Sunday Time journalist put to the AABN was, “what are you gong to do about this”. We reported the message from London to the ECD, which according to the London contacts included hard proof in bills of lading and Rhodesian issued pilots licenses.   

     Members of the Task Team then were put on alert and kept the aircraft under surveillance. We were fortunate in that we got the assistance of a pilot from Olympic Airways, who was prepared to pass on any information that he could access. What we got to hear from him was rather dramatic. Affretair’s Europe bound flight included a stopover in one of the Sahel countries to pick up lush red tomatoes. Its return journey to Salisbury was mainly to transport goods from Europe, and included aircraft spare parts, and even traditional Jeeps used by militaries.    

     A surveillance was set up at the Schiphol Holiday Inn where access was gained to the rooms the Affretair crew were using. Through the assistance of a chamber lady we were able to photocopy the airline pilots’ licenses, issued by the rebel regime in Salisbury. But even this was not enough to get an investigation going by the ECD. Our conclusion was that economic sanctions were principally a state weapon to achieve strategic objectives contrary to the interests of the liberation movement.

     A Palestinian group’s offer to “immobilize” the plan on the ground at Schiphol Airport debated in Algiers. The alternative option hotly debated was more rational - blow up the Beit Bridge. The rationale was to keep trade unions in the loop with intelligence work to confront end-game strategic options in the hands of corporations and financial institutions. So shortly after the Algiers meeting, the plan was activated and three separate missions sent in via Salisbury Airport, then overland to Beit Bridge, across the border and out again via Jan Smuts Airport. The plans and engineering maps were handed over to Philemon Makonese who would later meet up with Steven Nkomo based in Algiers to discuss the idea.

     The strategic view of sanctions became progressively refined with trade union solidarity cornerstone in the program of action. The Dutch unions were keen to buy into support programs for Namibian workers as well as for SACTU, but in both cases the role and program of the national liberation remained the context. In other words, supporting trade unionists in South Africa and Namibia implied support for armed struggle by the ANC and SWAPO.

     From the AABN I wrote a monthly Kommunikee, which outlined and gave flesh to the economic intelligence-driven economic sanctions campaign. These were meant for European parliamentarians and unionists with about 200 copies per month going in over the post to South African unionists. While limited in circulation, they made for very good reading and regular responses from within South Africa.

     The responses to the Kommunikees from unionists within South Africa was responsible to look at linking up in a less intrusive and compromising way for purposes of broadening the sanctions campaign to both fronts, from within and from outside of South Africa. With Henri Curiel’s support work and training kicking in the time was ripe to take things a step further. Makatini saw great value with the cadres who were working in the Wages Commissions and the trade union support work they were doing. Linking these up to the “sanctioneers” in exile made good sense and the cadres inside South Africa were very keen on the idea. In mid-year 1974 I went South Africa, underground to test and put the idea into practice. Whoever controls the intelligence feeding a sanctions campaign, controls the outcome. Naturally the unionists saw themselves as ideally placed to produce this intelligence.

     This 1974 mission had the full backing of OR Tambo whom I met for a briefing arranged by Makatini at the Saba Saba festival in Dar es Salaam, a month before the mission. Tambo was elated when Makatini briefed Tambo on the successful outcome of the mission. Some comrades in South Africa agreed to come to Paris for training by Solidarité. The cadres inside South Africa were briefed on the plan code named “Bold” which would have been ready for launch in 1975. This involved setting up an office for SACTU in Brussels to intervene on IFCTU unions making contacts for support work for the nascent unions inside South Africa.  It was necessary that the nascent unions in South Africa could critically reflect on these connections.           

·         The Estel Steel Report - 1975.

     From our watch on shipping news we noticed that a bulk carrier vessel had left Saldhana Bay routed to one of the European Atlantic ports. Thus was intriguing and MZ alerted our harbor unionist in Rotterdam. After a week MZ returned with an interesting report back. The bulk carrier was routed for Hamburg where it would offload a cargo of iron ore, brought in by rail to Saldhana Bay from Sishen iron ore mine.

     This news was confirmed in a most remarkable way. One of the members of the Task Team was a friend with an informant working at the Zuid Afrika Instituut, a right wing South African lobby group. This friend, the well-known Dutch author Adriaan van Dis, one day rifled through the desk drawer of the boss of the outfit, Jonkheer van Bose. He found a letter directed to van Bose from one of the Directors of the Dutch steelmaker Hoogovens, enquiring whether there would be repercussions if Hoogovens imported iron ore from South Africa.

     When we had the combination of this news we established that the German steelmaker, Hoescht, which was importing the shipload of iron ore through Hamburg harbor to test out in its factory, was in the process of a merger with Hoogovens. We convened a meeting between Task Team and a number of trade unionists, including the harbor worker and MZ, at the AABN offices for an impromptu media action. We informed a journalist of the Volkskrant, that during the night we would be confirming that the Dutch steelmaker Hoogovens intended importing iron ore from South Africa.

     By way of ruse we asked the journalist to give the Director of Hoogovens a call just before midnight, an hour before deadline for news to go out in the morning. To equip the journalist with a convincing story we told him that we had our whole Task Team at the ready that could fill in any open questions, which could come out of his first conversations with the Hoogovens director. All that the journalist knew was that shipload of iron ore was destined for Hoescht in Germany but there was no proof. But clearly the plan potentially was a much more ambitious import programme from South Africa. The bluff worked, the Director was taken by surprise and spilled all the beans within the first few minutes of the conversation with the journalist. Within the next week the Dutch Steelworkers came out in a mass meeting and demanded an immediate stop to the intended import of South African iron ore.

     Apart from the Sanctions Task Team (which was called the Rhodesia/Namibia Werkgroep), there was continuous interaction from the other two Task Teams, and especially from our industrial research task team (called the Vakbonden/Bedrijven Werkgroep). This industrial research Task Team was also fortunate to have a full time coordinator who was sponsored on a TNI fellowship. As this coordinator, Pim Juffermans, could draw on resources of other researchers of the TNI our research capacity proved itself for instant success in the Hoogovens ruse. 

     Much of the work of the sanctions Task Team on the other hand was spontaneous. Instead of research, teasing for information by trial error via unorthodox means became an intuitive gut driven process rather than sheer brainwork. But that did not mean that research did not matter at all. The Financial Mail from South Africa provided a valuable source of information. I for one read the Financial Mail from cover to cover and was well equipped for making intelligent guesses with regard to plans still in the pipeline, but about to happen. The Saldhana-Sishen project was extensively reported on in the Financial Mail so once a clue came our way we were at once equipped with the strategic economic context.   

·         The Nuclear Conspiracy Pretoria-Bonn
  
     The start of this amazing piece of work took place at the UNESCO Conference against Apartheid held in Paris, 1974. At these conferences all anti apartheid movements and groups including national liberation movements, international political and trade union movements could rub shoulders and bounce ideas and programs to enhance one another’s work. The UNESCO gathering turned out to be particularly fruitful for the Amsterdam-centered program of action.

     With the publicity surrounding the breakthroughs with regard to “busting the sanctions busters” the AABN attracted a lot of attention. At the time there was also a strong feeling that Anti Apartheid Movements cooperate more amongst themselves. This plan was shelved to a later date and never got off the ground. However informal cooperation began and became intensified over time. The success of one group was the success of all and the sharing of information had multiplier effects.

     Many of us were not aware of the specific nature of social movements sweeping the student and progressive world in general at the time. But as we will see, with the principle of networking and sharing of experience at these many gatherings of anti apartheid activist groups was not only intensifying, but a programme of action seemed to have developed a sustainability factor which would have been impossible if worked at through formal and orthodox modes of organization. This should not be over amplified as the so0-called 1960s movements were time bound and by 1975 there was a massive deflation and dissipation of energy. I am not speaking of the “Okhela” fiasco in South Africa in 1975, but the rise of a new era of capitalism, which would later be recognized as “neoliberalism”. What was possible in radical activism during the 1960s, early seventies, became extinct for a decade between 1975 and 1985. Indeed, most bibliographical consolidation to be found in both the liberation and solidarity movement tends to leave blank pages for this period, 1975 – 1985.     

     At these international gatherings, let us say early “social forum events”, the exchanges of information played a catalyst role between those formations that were open and not bound to organizational chauvinism or claims for ascendancy and leadership. The UNESCO Conference proved the point. A number of anti apartheid activist groups came together, mostly from continental Europe, including the Neville Curtis group from New Zealand, were present at the Conference. A meeting took place to discuss the new “research” techniques they had heard of taking place in Amsterdam. I made the main input on not placing too much reliance on formal research, and the need to do the obvious – sometimes what ends up in the garbage bag in the streets is precisely meant to be irrecoverable for research. Activists were encouraged to start asking themselves what opportunities exist to access information in the everyday life situation. Again, this sounds so mundane as to belong to the dustbin itself, but once brainstorming started on the every day potential to do simple intelligence work to garner information ideas seemed to germinate new ideas and became enlightened by a contagious enthusiasm.     

     Within a few weeks of the Conference our new methodology proved to be contagious. Rev Morton, who was working at the time for the Program to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches, excitedly turned up in Amsterdam reporting that he had found an airhostess who was able to blow the lid on how many airlines, including the best like KLM and BA, were selling airline tickets to Salisbury literally under the counter. The scheme was elaborate and nowhere was “Salisbury” mentioned, but it worked. Within a few weeks we had prepared a full report on this, estimating the nature and scale of tourism traffic generated for the rebel Rhodesians, and subsequently the whole scheme thwarted.

   But the big surprise still had to happen. Johnny Makatini gave me a call in Amsterdam and asked that I join him in London. When in London I found him excited about the prospects to disrupt a major Conference organized by the South Africa Foundation that was due to take place in Western Germany within a few days. African embassies were invited and a last minute invitation extended to the ANC as well. Evidently this was part of a master plan of the Apartheid apologists to gain moral high ground over the ANC and embark on a new strategy for whatever purpose that to this day is still unknown.

     After a few minutes of snap discussion the suggestion was that I travel back to Amsterdam and from there arrange to get Morton to Bonn where he could start working at church connections to alert them of the underhanded plan of the South Africa Foundation. Johnny would then move to Hamburg and start to warn off embassies. I would stay in communication with both from Amsterdam.

     The plan worked like a charm. Within a day the conference organizers were face to face with Makatini and Morton, trying to convince them of the merits in the event of the Conference going through. But Makatini was not to be charmed, and a day before it was to take place the event was called off. The organizers were furious.

     Morton came up with a report that our friends in Bonn had followed through on the plan we devised in Paris, at the UNESCO Conference. The team there had managed to keep the South African Embassy in Bonn under surveillance. They noticed that the Embassy was moving to a new location and remarkably left the old premises unguarded. They entered and after scrounging through heaps of boxes of material located a few with documentation relating to nuclear collaboration with South Africa. These documents were handed over to Morton, and in Amsterdam we passed them over to our researcher at the TNI. 

·         Verolme and Koeberg

     The main actions described above were seminal even though much of the documentation has either been lost, handed over the ANC (see later) but certainly all traceable through newspaper reports and what ever can still be find in archives scattered all over the world. For example I was pleasantly surprised that a few of the AABN Kommunikees can be found in the archives of Leyden University. Strangely enough not in the archive handed over by the AABN to NIZA. While I have included some of the smaller actions under the topic of the larger ones, given the need to be brief and to the point a number of other actions obviously fall through the cracks, interesting as they are.

     One action which needs mention, is the swift intervention made to block the Dutch corporation Verolme from building the Koeberg nuclear plant. A single newspaper article scuttled the plan. The Koeberg nuclear station did get built; a French firm jumped in and took the contract over from the Dutch. 

·         Mirage fighters and spare parts

     Literally, with a bare minimum of organization and by concentrating on networking, our activities swelled and took us more often than not by surprise. It was a case of success sowing other successes.

     Breytenbach pitched up in Amsterdam late 1974 with such a surprise. He had been given a caseload of microfilm documents coming from Curiel. It seemed appropriate though to ask a few questions. Curiel was regularly in touch with intelligence people in France and considered the internal security people, the DST, his friends. The microfilms, containing every conceivable angle on the Mirage deals between France and South Africa: training manuals, origin of spare parts, financial details you name it and it could be found on these films. Ostensibly they had been accessed through a DST agent and handed to Curiel for research and exposure.

     The material had enormous potential as it contained all the names of firms and their addresses of spare parts manufacturers. Doing the research was time consuming and we never were able to put the information to any use before the entire action programme was eclipsed by the happenings in South Africa, 1975.   

·         Eclipse of the AABN - 1975 

     The action plans for the year started out well. With the accumulation of successful activities over the previous years, 1975 promised to be a year of going from strength to strength. However we were also aware that the social climate was changing and the network densities and levels of activities from the flourish of the 1960s movements was dissipating. But then we had an arsenal of information that we were ready to act upon.

     We were also aware of a number of international dynamics, which made it essential for us to move soon in consolidating particularly our trade union work. This concerned mainly the “Bold” project. We reached an understanding with a number of Wages Commission cadres inside the country to take up an offer by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (IFCTU) to set up a trade union office in Brussels. This had the blessing of both SACTU and the IFCTU. As much of our work, including getting a project going for material support from the Dutch NVV for SACTU was undermined because SACTU was under the Moscow aligned WFTU, the Western trade unions had problems working with us directly. 

     We were quite aware that the intervention made via the International Metalworkers Federation in Geneva was a move against the liberation movement. The feeling was that with an SACTU office in Brussels interacting with the IFCTU we could keep pressure on sanctions and preempt its hi-jacking.

     It was for this reason that Breytenbach and myself thought to speed up finalization of the “Bold” project by my going in underground to recruit two union activists who were already partly prepared for the project during my underground visit in 1974. The idea was that Breyten would travel to newly independent Mozambique where, once the activists were briefed inside the country, they could meet him there. But there was also a contingency plan at Breytenbach’s own discretion to move into the country himself as he felt that this could prove useful in influencing a number of Afrikaner academics.       

     We moved into South Africa independently of one another. I had no time to do much apart from securing my cover addresses through Horst Kleinschmidt at Antero Machado’s flat in v.d. Merwe Street in Hillbrow, before it was clear that Breytenbach was making a hash of things getting himself and others arrested by the security police.

     About two weeks after Breytenbach’s arrest I managed to skirmish out of South Africa to Botswana. The Botswana government made arrangements for me to travel to Lusaka, where I was debriefed by Oliver Tambo. He was disappointed about the arrests, but believed that Breytenbach could turn the tables on the state. Tambo once more vowed me to silence about the underground initiative and sent me on my way back to Amsterdam where he said he would meet me later on.

     My reception in Amsterdam was cold. I soon gathered that there was trouble and that with the lack of open support it would be difficult for me to continue working openly in the AABN. Tambo visited in Amsterdam and an elaborate plan was made to continue with all the work at hand. However, it was clear that the initiative (to which I am still sworn to secrecy) had come into the crossfire of contending sides in the ANC. In Amsterdam I was openly attacked for being “anti communist”. Even though the Executive Committee was firmly behind me and there was no real reason to give up on my position, the fact of the matter is that my stateless situation severely compromised me. Fighting on and openly was inviting disaster.

     I also had to think of Breytenbach’s defense and for this I needed to be in Geneva as the International University Exchange Fund was providing for the legal defense of the students caught with Breytenbach in South Africa, and had offered to support Breytenbach as well. Getting out of the line of fire was in the interest of everyone, despite the fact that Tambo had requested that I stay put and don’t give up the Amsterdam base.  I had to think of my own safety and it was clear to me that the vehemence of fight members of the CPN were mustering would amount to open war had I chosen to counter them.

     I therefore gave Oliver Tambo a call and told him that the situation as he had left it in my hands was becoming intolerable. I told him that I was moving on, would go to Geneva, and would be linking up with Johnny as soon as I could. Tambo then sent Frene Ginwala to Amsterdam to collect the arsenal of information, including:

  1. All the nuclear conspiracy papers from Bonn;
  2. All papers relating to Mobil Oil supply lines to Rhodesia;
  3. A bundle of microfilms passed on from Henri Curiel, exposing the exact scale and nature of Mirage aircraft sales and maintenance to/with South Africa.

     While I was in Geneva Breytenbach’s trial was rushed and he appeared in Court within weeks in November 1975. It was a total fiasco. I was given an airline ticket by the IUEF to leave for Algiers. I stayed in the Algiers ANC office for a number of months, ostensibly “until the dust had settled”. I left Algiers in January 1976 to join up with Don Morton who was doing advanced Okhela work in the US.

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