Thabo Mbeki disses Schuitema

Robert Mugabe

ANC REJECTS MAN'S CLAIM TO BE "AGENT"
The Herald, Salisbury
May 1st 1981
BY Mike Overmeyer

THE African National Congress of south Africa has strongly denied
claims by an alleged former South African spy, Mr. Barend Schuitema, who is
now in Zimbabwe, that he worked as an agent for them.

Spokesmen for the ANC in London and Lusaka this week also denied claims
that an organization, Okhela, which Mr., Schuitema founded, had any links
with the South African resistance movement.

Schuitema claimed in a Sunday Mail report this week that after training
in Algeria and visiting Northern Ireland, he slipped back into South Africa
and began carrying out intelligence work for Umkhonto we Ziswe, the ANC
military wing.

An ANC official, Mr.,. Thabo Mbeki said from Lusaka: "Schuitema is not
and never has been a member or operative of the ANC." The party never had a
:"white wing or any other wing for that matter."

"To the best of our knowledge he is a South African national resident
in South Africa, having sought and gained permission from the Apartheid
regime to return from Europe in 1979.

Detention

"After detention for some time, he was released and allowed to settle
in Johannesburg without any charges being preferred against him and, as far
as we know, without any restrictions being placed on him.

"Why he must seek political asylum in Zimbabwe after having been
pardoned by Pretoria for whatever he might have done, is beyond our
comprehension", Mr. Mbeki said.

Mr. Schuitema has set up the "Zimbabwe H Block/Armagh Committee to
campaign for the political status for jailed IRA guerillas".

The London-based ANC spokesmen said: "he is someone who returned openly
to South Africa after working with the Anti Apartheid Movement in Holland.
It is absolute nonsense that he went back under the guidance of the ANC
leadership".

Schuitema, who was named ads a co-conspirator with the jailed Afrikaner
poet Breyten Breytenbach in his 1975 Terrorism Act trial, slipped into
Zimbabwe in August last year.

The one-time Klerksdorp miner who became a leading member of the Dutch
Anti Apartheid Movement in the late 1960's, returned to South Africa on
October 7th 1979 and spent 100 days in detention. In February 1980, South
African Security Police said Schuitema had been an informer since 1978 and
had been paid "several thousand rands" for information.

Hotly Denied

Mr. Schuitema hotly denied the charge at the time, saying police merely
wanted to discredit him.

During Breytenbach's first trial in 1975 Schuitema had formed an
organization calling itself Okhela together with Mr. Morton, a Methodist
priest now in the United States.

In an interview in Salisbury this week, Schuitema claimed that Okhela
was the white wing of the African National Congress of South Africa.

But the ANC spokesman in London said yesterday "the ANC never had a
white, coloured or Zulu wing. It has always been one ANC".

In Breytenbach's second trial in mid-1977 on charges of planning top
escape from prison, the judge found that Okhela could not said to exist in
the legal sense.

According to one South African Press report Schuitema tried in 1979 to
arrange his return to South Africa through the office of an Afrikaans Sunday
newspaper in London. He is said to have proposed that he be jailed in
exchange for poet Breytenbach's freedom. The Sunday newspaper is reported
not to have taken up his plea.

Schuitema said in an interview with the Herald, "I admit having played
a role in Breyten's arrest. It was very unfortunate.

I fell into that trap since I was not in prison while my comrade was in
isolation. I was disgusted".

"Today I do not have political asylum in Zimbabwe. I have a residence
permit which expires in September.

"When I first came I saw the Minister of State, Comrade Mnungagwa. He
saw how tired I was".

"The background to this is my problem with the people in London It was
a smear against me by the South African Communist Party. It was also a party
tactic of theirs to eliminate Okhela as an organization.

"Since 1975 things became very difficult for us outside South Africa.
At that time we had been dealing with people like Craig Williamson - not
knowing who he really was.

"But a clear political calculation was made by a number of comrades
that I return to South Africa and stand trial because by 1978 the
ideological condition within Okhela had altered very much.

"After my return, when I came back on the streets, the while thing
smoldered even more. I was detained for 100 days, but never stood trial", he
said.

He claimed to have gone underground as a combatant with the "blessing
of certain ANC leaders".

He denied having received bribes of "thousands of rand" from police for
information.

Money was pumped into the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement by the then
South African security police. All of us used that money - not only me".

"The police told me to the face they would get me and murder me", he
said. About Breytenbach's arrest, he said: "We made mistakes".

The ANC spokesperson in London said: "We cannot make decisions for the
Zimbabwe Government".

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