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:
- All
the nuclear conspiracy papers from Bonn;
- All
papers relating to Mobil Oil supply lines to Rhodesia;
- 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.
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