tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19098055195282725942024-03-12T16:00:08.295-07:00The Golden ThreadAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-70555238492929605222016-06-26T00:44:00.000-07:002016-06-26T00:44:34.948-07:00Crypto coins and pieces of eight <img src="https://www.moneyweb.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Blackbeard-vs-Darth-Vader-3-555x403.jpg?4f46e3" /><br />
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Crypto coins and pieces of eight</h4>
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Will past and future money dance on the grave of the present?</div>
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<span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Jerry Schuitema </span> | <span content="2016-06-24T00:49:57+00:00" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">24 June 2016 00:49</span><br />
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SWELLENDAM – My father was a gold miner. I spent some time underground as an onsetter; my younger brother worked at the Chamber of Mines, and my older brother, Berend, was a “shift-boss” for a number of years. Apart from sharing his mine-official internship with <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-08-25-roger-kebble-in-life-and-death-inextricably-linked-to-his-son-brett/#.V0atvjV97vY" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212e52; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Roger Kebble</a>, Berend in his blog, <a href="http://schuitemaberend.blogspot.co.za/2012/01/lord-himself-laid-them-to-rest.html" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212e52; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the Golden Thread</a>has captured some fascinating and valuable historical anecdotes of mining turbulence in the 60s and 70s. It was as if we were all drawn to gold exploration and mining; understanding and fascinated by its ancient allure in many things, but primarily in its then still unassailable position as the ultimate store of value and supremacy over paper money.</div>
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So it is with some bemusement that I have been following the mining of another unit of value – bitcoin. What? No headgear? No kilometres-deep shafts; no incline shafts, tunnels and ore-passes? No “ngolovans”, “hoppers”, “giraffes”, locos, skips and cages? No miners, rock-drillers, blasters, surveyors, riggers, and “skippies”? No man-made mountains of rock, slime dams and sinkholes? No surrounding towns, hostels, compounds and warrior-like camaraderie both underground and in dingy pubs and shebeens?</div>
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None of that stuff! You can create this unit of value by “simply” sitting at a computer and cracking a code. The inverted commas confirm the idiom that simple things are not always easy. It has become increasingly difficult, and demanding massive processing power. This is captured in an explanation on a leading crypto currency website, <a href="http://www.coindesk.com/information/how-bitcoin-mining-works/" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212e52; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CoinDesk which says</a>: “In traditional fiat money systems, governments simply print more money when they need to. But in bitcoin, money isn’t printed at all – it is discovered. Computers around the world ‘mine’ for coins by competing with each other”.</div>
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The term “mining for bitcoin” is therefore no co-incidence. Like gold, it has to be discovered and exploited through massive effort and resources: just in a very different form. In comparing the two as a unit of value and potential means of exchange, it invokes a computer game image of Blackbeard with a gold-plated sword doing battle with Darth Vader with a lightsaber.</div>
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So now we have three potential forms of money, each with their own element of fiction. If you strip gold of its ancient allure, its historic backing of paper currencies and its investment and adornment image, you could certainly posit the Keynes view that it is a “barbarous relic”. If you interrogate bitcoin’s mysterious and anonymous founding, creation structure and block chain security, you could equally have some qualms. But both do not come near the degree of fiction that permeates fiat currencies. Debt is a fiction. It is nothing more than a promise to pay sometime in an ever-delayed future – a very empty promise considering the increasing extent to which the gap between debt creation and the means to pay is beyond redemption.</div>
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As fellow columnist, Magnus Heystek <a href="http://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/economy/didnt-see-coming-neither/" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212e52; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">has mooted</a>, many believe it must perish. The only question is which will survive and will there indeed be a battle between Blackbeard and Vader over the corpse? Blackbeard seems to be stirring under tons of derivative froth, with some believing he may emerge as early as this year. And Vader’s saber light has grown brighter with mineable bitcoin reserves being halved.</div>
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Perhaps they won’t square off against each other. Perhaps they will join forces to replace the deceased. I understand Blackbeard pretty well, but I must confess that I am still a novice at understanding Vader.</div>
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I am of the generation that bridged the age of deprivation and the age of abundance. It was a bridge that by its very nature implied some fundamental shifts in socio-economic constructs. Few of those momentous shifts have been more profound than the rapid pace of technology. It’s a concern shared by many, albeit in no small number by those frustrated with the latest smart-phone – only to be disdainfully helped by a 12 year old. But there are many too who have deeper concerns – about losing their jobs to some machine; or having their academic achievements made redundant by apps and algorithms. It has even disturbed the vestiges of policy makers, economists and advisors, facing disruption of conventional metrics that either inform, or ill-inform their decisions.</div>
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In its most significant feature of all, we should not fear technology but rather the stifling of it. And that is in block-chain technology that is wielding a lightsaber into the parasitic fat which is smothering value-creation. The scalpel has three shapes:</div>
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<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;">promising to restore integrity to the global means of exchange;</li>
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;">spawning new companies with very different organisational structures than their typical equity-based counterparts and</li>
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;">New methods of funding enterprise.</li>
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In the first, we may still be a long way from bitcoin or other crypto currencies becoming a real threat to fiat currencies, but even a casual follower of topical events will be aware that our debt-driven means of exchange is simply unsustainable. In that contest, crypto currencies have to firmly establish their integrity in facing an establishment onslaught. Despite the latest DAO <a href="https://www.inverse.com/article/17133-ethereum-value-crashing-after-dao-hacker-siphoned-millions" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212e52; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">hacking crisis</a>, bitcoin itself is gradually overcoming suspicions around its mysterious formation and while it cannot be blamed for how villains use it, abuse will simply add weight to detractor arguments, especially from vested financial services.</div>
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The second – the growth of so-called “insurgent”, or “disruptor” company models holds even greater promise. They take us back to ancient principles of value creation which is that cell I spoke of in <a href="http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-opinion/economic-cohesion/" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212e52; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">this Moneyweb article</a>.</div>
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The third – that of crowd-funding is perhaps the most exciting of all. It is still very early days, but last year alone, it <a href="http://dazeinfo.com/2016/01/12/crowdfunding-industry-34-4-billion-surpass-vc-2016/" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212e52; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">raised nearly $35 billion dollars</a>, a near 6-fold increase in three years. It is challenging conventional equity markets and is certainly a threat to venture capital.</div>
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The three together are mutually supportive and represent a formidable force that give a whisper of a different, more equitable, more credible, and more values-driven tomorrow. Of course, they can fall (and have already fallen) prey to the same speculators, predators, mercenaries and villains that have savaged the global economy and whose actions encouraged the birth of these alternatives in the first place.</div>
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Their future depends on their integrity. That cannot be cemented and maintained by doing more of the same.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-5705963681794845992016-06-18T11:21:00.002-07:002016-06-21T01:30:51.276-07:00My Brother Jerry Schuitema<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
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<br />
<br />
JERRY SCHUITEMA:
Author, broadcaster, columnist, and designer of Contribution Accounting©.<br />
<br />
Jerry Schuitema was born in Benoni on the 22nd of January, 1944 as Jurjen
Antonius Franciscus Schuitema.
He comes from gold mining stock with his father having spent most of his adult life
underground in South African gold mines, and all of Jerry’s school years were lived
in various mining camps, villages and towns. He worked for some months as an
onsetter and two of his brothers worked in the industry. His elder brother, Berend
Schuitema went into exile after a promising start to a gold mining career, to found the
Anti-Apartheid movement in Holland.<br />
<br />
Jerry matriculated at Milner High School, Klerksdorp in 1961. After his mining
experience, he spent a year in Amsterdam to study, but limited funds forced him into
a number of odd jobs before returning to South Africa in 1962. He completed his
military call-up the following year.
He studied Economics, Political Science and History at the University of South Africa
dropping out in the final year to concentrate on his journalist career. He completed
the Senior Management Development programme at the Oxford Centre for
Management Studies in 1983.
After a year of insurance underwriting, he joined the South African Broadcasting
Corporation as a reporter in 1966. His reporting beats covered a wide field, but
concentrated on Economic affairs. He went on to pioneer the establishment of the
Economics Desk as a separate, specialist Reporting Unit within the SABC and
became the SABC's first Economics Editor.
In March 1990, he established South Africa's first Specialist Developmental
Communications consultancy.
Married to Kathleen Eveline in 1967. Widowed in 2004. Three children and seven
grandchildren. Hobbies: Reading, and Do-it-yourself.
Website:<br />
<br />
http://www.jerryschuitema.co.za/
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Designed and introduced most of the popular Economic slots on Radio and
Television over two decades. These included:<br />
<br />
"Radio Today’s” Economics report.<br />
<br />
The lunch-time Radio Market Trends.<br />
<br />
"Indicator" reports on TV.<br />
<br />
The investment programme "Diagonal-Street" on TV1.<br />
<br />
The Employee Reporting Programmes: "Egoli\Gauteng" on TV 2 & 3.
The Business report on Breakfast TV.<br />
<br />
The economic Educational Programme: "Econovision”.<br />
<br />
He has written on Economic subjects for popular and layman magazines and
periodicals including:
Reader's Digest; Rapport; Mining Sun; Retail World; Black Enterprise Magazine.
Management Today; The Chartered Accountant; HR Management; Convergence;
The Star (Workplace); People Dynamics; HRHighway.<br />
<br />
He has authored 4 books.
"Econosense” first published in 1990 simplified economic concepts for the layman
but is now out of print. (Foreword by the former minister of Finance, the Hon Barend
du Plessis reads: "The author needs little introduction .... as a polished
communicator with a particular knack for simplifying complex economic issues.")
“Value through Values” Published in 2007 examines values and ethics in business
and economics and is more fully described below. “Empathy” and “Common
Purpose; Common Fate” were published as e-books in 2015.<br />
<br />
EXPERIENCE
Mining (Onsetter); Insurance underwriter; Broadcasting and Economics journalism.
Studied Management at Templeton College; Oxford University as part of the Rosholt
Fellowship; and this included a fortnight sabbatical at Time Magazine, New York.
Attended for coverage, many conferences including many annual conventions of
leading Business and Labour representative organisations.<br />
<br />
Attended 10 annual
meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Broadcasting
career has ensured intense exposure to a wide variety of Economic and associated
affairs, including financial, company, macro-economic, and labour issues.
AWARDS:<br />
<br />
1979. Sanlam Financial Reporting prize in the TV category.<br />
<br />
1981. Sanlam Financial Reporting prize in the TV category;<br />
<br />
1982. First winner of the Rosholt Fellowship in Executive Journalism;<br />
<br />
1984. Sanlam Financial Reporting prize in the TV and Radio category;<br />
<br />
1988. F A K Prestige Prize for his contribution to Afrikaans Economic
reporting;<br />
<br />
1988. SABC Management Artes Award for his contribution to enhancing
Economic Awareness and promoting the concept of management
accountability to employees in the public Media.<br />
<br />
1990. Consumer Council Certificate for contribution to consumer awareness.
CITATIONS AND NOMINATIONS<br />
<br />
1976. Artes nomination: Coverage of the Swaziland Mineral Resource
conference.<br />
<br />
1979. Artes nomination: South Africa and the IMF.<br />
<br />
1981. Artes nomination: 12 Months after the Carlton conference.<br />
<br />
1982. Artes nomination: Gold: its role as money.<br />
<br />
1987. Development Bank: Contribution to the enhancement of understanding
of development issues.<br />
<br />
1988. Artes Nomination: The Labour Communication crisis.<br />
<br />
1990. Vanderbijlpark Afrikaanse Sakekamer. Contribution to Economic
coverage in Afrikaans and coverage of AHI affairs.<br />
<br />
1990. Minister of finance, Mr Barend du Plessis. "My association with him in
more than a decade as Economics broadcaster, has convinced me of his
indefatigable missionary zeal in enhancing economic awareness." (Foreword:
"Econosense”.)
COMPANY MODELLING AND CONTRIBUTION ACCOUNTING©.
The conviction that the narrow profit driven company model is self-destructing and
still covertly expresses labour as an exploitable commodity led to the development of
the Market driven, Contribution Accounting© model, based on the powerful CARE
AND GROWTH principles which have become the hall-mark of Schuitema
Associates of which he was the principal founder after a business rescue of his
brother Etsko's fledgling leadership consultancy. Etsko, and a partner were the cofounders.<br />
<br />
Together with the leadership work, and under Jerry Schuitema’s direction,
Schuitema Associates was able to offer a comprehensive turnaround intervention
based on growth as opposed to containment implied in conventional re-engineering.
This work has been given much greater clarity and comprehensiveness under the
new company Value through Values (Pty) Ltd and now in retirement as an
independent counsellor.<br />
<br />
EMPLOYEE REPORTING
Jerry Schuitema has done extensive research into the concept of employee
communication and contextual economic communication as a natural extension of
his commitment to the enhancement of Economic awareness. He first became
interested in the subject with the realisation some years ago, that public
broadcasting had a limited role to play in improving understanding of economic
issues, and that far more could be achieved with a structured, educational approach
on the work floor. His l2-week study period at the then Oxford Centre for
Management Studies (now named "Templeton College"), gave him the opportunity to
examine techniques of Employee Reporting and their achievement in Britain and
Europe. He worked closely with the Unisa "Project Free Enterprise" team, and his
concept of Employee Reporting has received special mention in their 1989 report on
employee misconceptions.
He has also worked with the accounting profession, on content and presentation of
relevant financial information for employee Accounting practices.<br />
<br />
He has also had
four articles on the subject published in "Accountancy SA”.
He established the Employee Reporting programmes: Egoli\Gauteng on TV2\3 as a
commitment to management’s public accountability to the employee, and these
programmes were considered to be the first of their kind in a world where public
accountability is assumed to be the sole domain of the shareholder. This pioneering
effort has had highly favourable labour response and received a Special SABC
Management Artes award.
The core of the employee communications work has crystallised into a single,
powerful focus on Wealth Creation and value driven market principles. This theme
has gained momentum and is rapidly being adopted by other actors in the field.<br />
<br />
His public appearances in this regard include numerous writings; seminars and
speeches, including those under the auspices of the Free Market Foundation, The
National Productivity Institute and the Public Relations Institute of South Africa.
In 2003 he left Schuitema Associates to form the Value through Values group. In
2006 VtV (Pty) Ltd was taken over by Soul Circle (Pty) Ltd. His work has been
applied at many South African companies such as South African Airways, Pick ‘n
Pay, A.E.L., Tredcor, Sentrachem, Sasol, S.A.B., Momentum Life, Firstrand Group,
Absa, NCP and small enterprises such as Empire Dairies and Midrand Panelbeaters.<br />
<br />
THE PHILOSOPHY
The book, “Value through Values” examines the impact of value driven economic
behaviour over a very broad front from individual success and contentment to
country and company performance. The treatise shows the extent to which a change
in behaviour could effect virtually all aspects of a collective, casting a new light on
key issues such as ethics, governance, transparency, employee commitment,
fortune sharing, accounting practices, investment, and sustainability.
In his foreword to the work, Pick ‘n Pay chairman Raymond Ackerman says:
“It really is a treatise on ‘Corporate Governance’, but Corporate Governance
voluntarily implemented by Business Leaders to create a successful Company, a
successful Economy and a vibrant country. It is a practical formula which just needs
to have passion, clarity, and the heart to pursue it to the ultimate, thereby fulfilling the
aims and objectives of the Company and its employees.
“I commend Jerry for putting this book together in such a meticulous and meaningful
way. He has played a leading role in Business, and I think this pioneering work of his
is not only timely, but deserves to be read and studied by Business Leaders and
students in the years ahead”.<br />
<br />
Other endorsements said:
"The one thing which stands out above all others during the couple decades I've
known Jerry is the way he has inspired many of us to think deeply about ethics and
values. And how we can use them to make a contribution in business and our daily
lives. This manuscript will help his carefully considered ideas reach a wider
audience. Jerry is usually ahead of the game. With this book, though, his timing is
impeccable. Bravo."
Alec Hogg. Founder and Editor in Chief: Moneyweb Business News.
"It is a well written testament to Jerry’s humanity. I was moved beyond words by the
introduction. People constitute Society and interact with each other in many different
ways. Some interactions are positive and add to the common good and some are
negative and diminish society. But it is always within the gift of the individual as to
how he will interact.
So much of life is dominated by commercial interaction. The concepts of the smart
deal, profit and value are absorbed at an early age and then acted upon for the rest
of our lives especially in our dealings with others. Business is constituted by these
very people - us - and it is we who choose its character and determine its
predilection to add to the common good. It is this value in a Business Endeavour that
will secure its legacy in Society and contribute mightily to a sustainable and coherent
proposition for value creation for shareholders, employees, communities - for society
as a whole. This book makes the case for this in a simple but powerful way."
Mick Davis. Former CEO Xtrata Mining and Resource Group.
“I have read this book with great interest, as it confirms what I believe good
managers have always instinctively practiced. This is the insistence that moral
values, such as honesty and integrity, rank equally with technical excellence in staff
and client relationships to secure long-term sustainability.
Jerry Schuitema gives us methods of evaluating these values. It should help senior
executives to select potential leadership candidates on their ability to foster common
purpose and common fate in their companies. It should be good reading for such
candidates."
Frank Aab (the late). Former Chairman, Concor Civil Engineering.
"I have always been impressed by Jerry Schuitema's writings. He has exhibited a
deep understanding of the need to strike a proper balance between man as homo
economicus, and the person who draws his or her inspiration and motivation in social
and economic dealings from appropriate ethical values.”
Ali Allawi. Economist, Investment Banker, former Minister of Finance and Defence in
the Iraqi Transitional Government, Author: The Occupation of Iraq. Winning the War,
losing the peace.
As part of his employee communications and awareness campaigns, Jerry
Schuitema collaborated with some of South Africa's leading employee training
departments to develop in house training on business and company figures. This led
to the design of his two flagship programmes, People and Wealth, and Inspired
Service. The former had great influence on South African Entrepreneur, Ian Fuhr in
his founding of the beauty franchise chain, Sorbet. In his book “Get that Feeling” he
writes: “Through Jerry Schuitema’s People and Wealth programme, I learnt that
business was nothing more than people serving people. Everything else flowed from
that.”
Jerry mostly received more than 90% good to excellent ratings on his talks and
workshops. Feedback from these workshops bear testimony to the power of the
message, his passion and the lasting impact he has on his audiences.
"I definitely have been inspired and have learnt something new about me. THANK
YOU JERRY!"
"It is fantastic to get information from someone who has had so many experiences
and to share it with us."
"Learned a lot and it has opened my eyes."
"This course is highly recommended to anybody and I think if our country can be run
in this way of thinking we’ll be a lot better off!"
"Very good for me. Thank you very much!"
"There are a lot of unhappy people who need this workshop to put things into
perspective."
"Jerry made me realise that there is nothing wrong with giving."
"Jerry made me see things in a different light."
"Jerry is excellent!"<br />
<br />
PUBLICATIONS:<br />
<br />
Author of “Econosense” Southern Books. 1st Edition 1990. 2nd Edition 1998.
Oxford University Press. (Econosense was prescribed reading at some
Tertiary institutions, and recommended reading at others.)<br />
<br />
Author of “Value through Values”. Thomas Griffel 2007.
Author of “Empathy; the power within” and<br />
<br />
“Common Purpose; Common Fate: making business sense of Empathy” in
2015.<br />
<br />
Writer for five years of the Reader’s Digest annual Personal Finance feature.<br />
<br />
“Accounting Statements and Unemployment”. People Dynamics 1999.<br />
<br />
“Going for Growth.” Productivity S.A. 1999. (Published under the name W.
Lambourne.)<br />
<br />
“The Care and Growth Business model”: Series of 4 articles for the Star:
Workplace: 2001.<br />
<br />
“Organisational Transformation Is Missing The Point!” Business Day 2000.<br />
<br />
“The Value Added Statement: The case for its wider use and a sensible
standard.” Series of 2 Articles. Accountancy S.A. 2001<br />
<br />
“Tackling Unemployment through an African Economic Model”: Black
Leadership 2000.<br />
<br />
“The care and Growth Business Model”: Series of 10 Articles: Management
Today 2001/2002.<br />
<br />
“The Worker: Cost or Noble Contributor?” Labour Bulletin: 2001.<br />
<br />
“Sustainability and Governance: To be Feared or Revered?” Convergence
2007.<br />
<br />
“Ethics: Who is to Blame?” DE Kat 2007.
“Labour Unrest: A new Understanding of Business needed.” HRHighway
2007.<br />
<br />
“Flexible Pay: Threat or Opportunity?” HRHighway 2007.<br />
<br />
“The Fallacy of Figures”. HRHighway 2007.<br />
<br />
Fortnightly Column for Moneyweb 2013-<br />
<br />
Berend SchuitemaAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-10039994752068965112016-06-01T08:40:00.002-07:002016-06-04T07:35:06.730-07:00Verkykerskop car chase<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 26.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Verkykerskop car chase</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><img src="http://caitlinbarrett.freehostia.com/portfolio/sketches/images/sketch_1.png" /><b><br /></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My late
grandfather was once the Postmaster of the Turfontein Post office. He told this story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Just four
years after the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, when South
Africa finally became an independent country, although still a member of the
British Commonwealth, the Country found itself embroiled in what became known
as the “Great War”. Britain and Germany went to war in what was to be the
biggest conflict in human history. It was the first war ever to involve every
continent in the World, and in the end millions of lives were lost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">South Africa
was a vitally important part of the British war effort, and as part of the
Empire it was automatically on England’s side. The value to Britain was the
enormous resources of raw material South Africa could supply to feed the ever
increasing demands of the war effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">However,
this country’s support for Britain was not unanimously popular with South
African’s. By far the largest section of
the white population were Afrikaners, and many of them had been part of the
Boer forces facing Britain during the awful Anglo Boer War. Memories of
concentration camps where four times more South African women and children died
than soldiers in the field, and the shocking “scorched earth tactics” used by
the British to force the Boer fighters into submission were still fresh. It is
no surprise that there were many South African and other dissidents active in
the country at the time. It was extremely difficult to find these underground
activists, because many of the secret police and other agencies charged with
finding them were actually also sympathetic to Britain’s enemies. It was an
incredibly complicated situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Back to my
grandfathers’ part in this tale. A team of investigators unearthed a trio of
secret agents, or spy’s, who had been engaged in sending information to
Germany, through contacts in South West
Africa, concerning the shipment of men, arms, ammunition, gold bullion and the
movements of Britons. For instance British pilots were being trained in South
Africa. For a while it seemed that
nothing could be kept secret. Every move was monitored and reported. Ships carrying vital supplies were attacked
soon after leaving Cape Town, often by vessels based in South West Africa. To
counter this South African forces entered South West Africa, drove out the
German forces based there and took over running that country. Despite this
there was still the problem of undercover agents in South Africa. During the
South West African operation the names of many agents and their methods were
seized, and thus three South African citizens were identified as ringleaders.
Two of them, both of German decent, were caught, tried and executed in Pretoria
as traitors. The third, Johannes Oosthuisen, a 30 year old Afrikaner living at Aasvoelkop on the northern outskirts of Johannesburg (now Northcliff), was
identified as the head of a sophisticated spy-ring. Oosthuisen was a young boy
growing up on his family farm in Broederstroom, near what is now Hartbeespoort
Dam, when British soldiers arrived and ordered his mother, himself and two
sisters to take what they could carry out of their farmhouse and burned it to
the ground. After driving off their cattle and other livestock the soldiers rode
away laughing, leaving them sitting in their smouldering farmyard. Little
wonder Johannes Oosthuisen took sides against them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was by
chance he had evaded capture when his fellow agents had been arrested. He had
stopped at the Aasvoelkop Dutch Reformed church on his way to Johannesburg to
tell his wife, who put new flowers in the church every day, that he would be
home late that night. Little did he know that he would never return home, or
see her again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From
Northcliff he drove past the farm Emmarentia on his way to the Drill Hall in
Johannesburg, where he had a source who kept him up to date with the movements
of British Officers and their allies in the South African army. His car was his
pride and joy which he kept in perfect condition. On his way he stopped near
Johannesburg station to fill it, preparing for any eventuality. As he
approached the Drill Hall, on the eastern side of the city he was instantly
alerted when both the guards on duty looked his way, and one of them turned and
ran across the parade ground towards the main building. Instinctively he drove
on, noting the concentrated attention the remaining guard gave him as he drove
past. His usual habit was to drive past the army base and on to Doornfontein,
the next suburb. Here he would normally park and have lunch at the
Doornforntein Hotel, for all the world
like a regular businessman meeting a few friends to discuss the progress of the
war, as did everyone in Johannesburg. What he was actually doing was collecting
information gleaned through a network of soldiers, policemen, workers, servants
and other talkative people. Despite the seriousness of the situation, in
reality South Africa seemed far from any action. Once he had analysed this
information he would set the system of reporting it into motion. Mostly it was
passed on through a complicated network of coded phone calls, letters and
verbal messages carried by regular South Africans who had no love for their
English allies. The past was still too recent to forget, and Afrikaans South
Africans in particular were only a generation or two away from their European
forebears, many of them Austrian and German. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ever
vigilant, Oosthuisen parked and went to his usual table in the hotel, thinking
it strange for his two closest aides not to be there already. They both lived
in nearby Bez Valley, and were generally there before him. As he sat down
Marie, the pretty young Afrikaans day receptionist walked casually past his
table, and seeming to stop for a brief greeting said in Afrikaans, “Johannes,
only twenty minutes ago four policemen took Piet and Gerhardt (his fellow
agents) away after asking if you would be here today. They told them no, you
had church business at Aasvoelkop, and would not be here until tomorrow…and in
fact here they are now..” with that she walked on back to the entrance hall.
Quick as a flash Oosthuisen fled out through the kitchen, through a hedge and
into his car. He knew the game was up, and he needed to get as far as he could
from Johannesburg. They had prepared for this emergency, and later the police
revealed they knew about the planned escape route from Durban by coastal
steamer to South West Africa. At the beginning of the war this was German
occupied territory, and a safe haven for agents like Oosthuisen and his
colleagues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As he drove
away the secret police and an army officer watched him leave. He was now one of
the most wanted men in the country. They knew he had an extensive network of
informants, and an effective system to get information out of the country. A team had already raided his house, and
another the church where his wife worked. It was time to put out the 1914
version of an all points bulletin to track him down and catch him. The fastest method of communication at the
time was the telephone and the telegraph, both operated by the post office. Every police station and army base in the
country was connected by a telephone linked to the nearest post office
telephone exchange. So the message was immediately sent out and Johannes Oosthuisen became every
policeman’s number one priority. In addition to this, the network of post
offices and the telegraph system was even more extensive than police stations,
and it wasn’t unusual for the police to enlist the aid of every post master
around the country, and so a telegraph went to every post master to look out
for him. A description of his car was included as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The escape
route though Durban and other ports was well known to the authorities, and
extra vigilance was urged from all post offices and police stations on the
routes to the coast. The shortest was via Nelspruit to the port of Lourenco
Marques, (now Maputo), or Durban. To get to LM meant he would have to go
through the border post, so Durban seemed much safer. A special watch was
placed on all trains on those routes as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Oosthuisen
decided to escape though Durban. Everything was set up for this eventuality. All
he had to do was get there. He knew he had no time to waste, and planned to
drive straight to Durban as soon as he got into his car. He knew if he was caught he could expect no mercy from
the British authorities, so time was of the essence. He also knew that the road
out of Johannesburg to Durban would be watched, so he headed straight for
Benoni on the east of the city. From there he headed south through Springs to
Greylingstad, hoping to avoid the patrols on the obvious route. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My
Grandfather, being a postmaster, had a grandstand view of all the activity. As
no one knew where Oosthuisen was headed, telegraphic messages flew fast and
furiously around the country. Every post master got the same messages. Then
messages started coming back from all parts of the country, Oosthuisen was
sighted all over the place. A very positive trail seemed to be towards the
Western Transvaal, a strong farming area, and the theory was that he was
heading into the Platteland where German sympathisers would hide him. Other
theories were that he would hide out in the older suburbs of Johannesburg,
where my Grandfather was stationed. There was lots of excitement everywhere. In
army headquarters in Johannesburg a special task team tried to co-ordinate the
hunt, and make sense of all the incoming information.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In those
days there was no tarred highway down to Durban. The road was unpaved, and
wandered through farmland and open bush on its’ way down to the coast. Fuel was
usually only available at petrol stations in the larger towns, and stored in
cans in smaller ones. Also it was July, midwinter, and the countryside along
the edge of the Drakensberg mountains gets bitterly cold. Snow falls in the
area are common.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Toward late
afternoon a call came in from the town of Balfour. The postmaster reported a
car driven by a lone driver had stopped for fuel at the local farm co-op, and
had driven on. The timing was right for someone having left Johannesburg just
before lunch time. The driver was wearing a city suit, also unusual for the
weather conditions where he had to stop often and open farm gates on the road.
The hunters began to concentrate on the area. The next town could be
Standerton, or perhaps Vrede, both routes to Newcastle, on the main road to
Durban. Police and army units in both towns were ordered out to intercept him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Oosthuisen
must have passed though Standerton just as these pursuers were getting
organised, and drove through without stopping. He must have guessed that they
would be lying in wait for him on the road outside Newcastle or Ladysmith
(ironically the site of one of the worst British military defeats ever at
Spionkop during the Boer war) He decided to take an alternative, and more
difficult route through the town of Vrede. As he got to there once again he
couldn’t stop as the police were arriving at the only petrol store as he got
there. They were just too late to stop him, but they did get onto the telegraph
to confirm a positive sighting. Telegraphs clattered throughout the country,
and excitement built in every town in the area. Policemen and volunteers donned
warm clothing and formed up on the dirt main streets. The last action any of
them had seen was during the Boer war fourteen years earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Oosthuisen
now had to change his plans. His biggest problem was fuel. Cars of the day were
not really made for long distance touring, and he hadn’t been able to stop in
either Balfour or Vrede. The next stop on the road to Durban was Newcastle. He
knew that would be a problem. It was a larger and more organised town with an
efficient police force and a nearby army base. He decided to head for
Verkykerskop. This little outpost was
nothing more than a trading store, a few houses and the post office. He knew
the local farmers would have fuel, and probably no policemen. Perhaps he hoped
to hole up with a sympathetic farmer, we’ll never know. He drove on through the winter night. It had
been raining earlier, and the road was a mud bath, reducing his speed sometimes
to a walking pace. Then it started to snow, as it often does in the area. The
white mantle may have helped him find his way, reflecting some light form his
modest headlights. Not long before midnight he was only a few hundred meters
from the little town when he ran out of fuel. He didn’t even bother to pull
onto the side of the road…what traffic would possibly come this way? The post
master and one policeman heard the approaching car, and as the policeman got up
from the fire, un-holstering his pistol, the postmaster sent out a simple
message…he’s here!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The two men
warily stepped out into the night. Looking down the road they could see the
car…the moon had peeped out from behind the cloud, the snow had stopped and the
countryside was lit with a strange brightness.
In the time it had taken them to send their message and prepare to go
outside Oosthuisen had broken into the store and had carried two twenty liter jerry
cans of fuel to the car, and was pouring
one of them into the tank.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Hey”,
shouted the policeman nervously, as he pointed his pistol waveringly at the
most wanted man in the country, “Oosthuisen, put your hands up and come
here!” Oosthuisen kept on pouring.
Afterwards the postmaster said he looked terrified or frozen with cold, maybe
both.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Later the
policeman said he had no recollection of pulling the trigger, but he fired a
single shot at the fugitive. It missed by far, but glanced off the steel body
of the car, making a spark which instantly ignited the pouring fuel.
Instinctively Oosthuisen jumped back, spilling burning petrol over himself. Arms
outstretched, mouth open in a silent scream, the human torch turned towards his
captors……as he started to crumble into human ash he fell into the open door of
the car…leaning against the rubber bulb of the gleaming brass horn. Johannes
Oosthuisen breathed his last in time to the plaintive hoot of his treasured cars’
horn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Just after
midnight my grandfather read the same telegraph which flashed around the
country….Oosthuisen is dead!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To this day,
every time it snows in mid July in vicinity of Verkykerskop the locals swear
they hear the sound of that old hooter just after midnight….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">(Story written by Clive as narrated to him by his grandfather, Charles Strugnall.)</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-44982583648838458442016-04-17T23:46:00.001-07:002016-05-30T04:13:06.105-07:00Vula: Tim Jenkins and Conny Braam according to Maharaj<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Padraig O'Malley - POM<br />
Mac Maharaj - MM </div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Between May 1995 and October 1995 Tim Jenkins wrote a series of articles for Mayibuye which he calls <span class="cItalic">The Story of the Secret Underground Communications Network of Operation Vula</span>. I'd like to go through different comments he made about the state of the underground communication system and how it worked and his conclusions. He say: -</div>
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"In the mid 1980s there was a great deal of soul searching taking place in the ANC. Where there had been some spectacular armed attacks against the apartheid regime the underground struggle had not really taken off. There was very little to show for years of struggle."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I think that's too simplistic an introduction. Yes there were problems. If you look at just the military type of operations I think we would be able to access statistics of the increasing number of operations, that's number one, over the years post 1976.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Where would those be available?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I don't know if Howard Barrell recorded them in his doctoral thesis but I've referred Caryl to look at his material. But they would also be accessible through a chap like Rashid Aboobaker who used to be in Special Operations. His real first name is not Rashid, it's Ismail. He's now working for the Reserve Bank.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Ismail is the second name?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Ismail Aboobaker. He was in the Special Operations Unit that was set up with OR's permission by Joe Slovo and that's the team, the unit that carried out Voortrekkerhoogte, Sasol, Koeberg. I know that they used to keep statistics of the number of operations but I am saying it's very clear to me if I think back that the number of operations were increasing. This was a problem we were seized with at the Revolutionary Council.</div>
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As against that another important statistic is the number of casualties. Our number of casualties were at a very high level in the late seventies and slowly we began to reduce the casualties. Sadly, if you look at the political scene and the interaction of the mass and the underground struggle you will see that at the overt level mass struggle starting with the strikes of 1973, 1976 –</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>The Durban strikes?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>The Durban strikes, the Frelimo rally in 1975, Soweto uprising, the Release Mandela campaign, the Anti-Republic campaign of 1981 where there was a convergence of a lot of underground political activity and underground military activity. Then if you look at post-1981, you look at the Release Mandela campaign taken up by Percy Qoboza of The World, it became a hugely popular campaign. (Qoboza- he was editor of The World at that time and The World was subsequently banned.)</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Where is he now?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>He's dead. His daughter I think is secretary to Khetso Gordhan at the Rand Merchant Bank. But if you look at that, if you look at the anti South African Indian Council Campaign in 1981/82, you look at the emergence of the UDF in 1984, you look at the transformation and emergence of COSATU in 1985, so you would see an increasing activity, underground political, overt political, military type of action. The problem that we were examining from as far back as 1981 was that having escalated the level of activity what was preventing it from becoming solidly rooted, we were necessarily keeping the underground political section separate from the overt mass section, the underground military section separate from the other two, our intelligence structures separate from the other three. The co-ordination was in Lusaka at the level of the Revolutionary Council. The separation was for security reasons so that a casualty on one section or one unit did not ripple through the organisation at all. We wouldn't end up like you ended up after Rivonia.</div>
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Now things were isolated. We needed as a solution to begin to have that co-ordination nearer home hoping to end up, that that co-ordination would take place even at home at some point. So we began to put up political/military committees in Swaziland, in Maputo, in Botswana so that nearer the front there was that co-ordination. That was what we called the Senior Organs that we created.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Those Organs would then report to the Revolutionary Council?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>In Lusaka, yes. The second thing that we isolated as a problem was that now that the struggle was escalating the conditions were arising where senior leadership ought to be located inside the country, not just in Swaziland, etc. Because we said that the clandestine methods of communication were too slow to enable that feedback to take place and assess, so as far back as 1981 after the Republic Campaign we decided to set up area political committees inside the country, sending in senior people. But every year that we took stock of the results of that we found that (a) the most senior people we were sending in were people settled in Swaziland/Maputo and they were not from the National Executive, they were not from the Revolutionary Council, and that one we began to argue that we were afraid that a senior person sent in and getting arrested would be a demoralising thing for the public and our own forces.</div>
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So these were some of the problems that we were isolating which is the basis on which Vula evolved. Tim's opening statement is too simple when he says there was very little to show for the years of struggle.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>He said: "Only hundreds of activists in the enemies' jails and we lost tons of precious weaponry."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I think that's again an exaggeration. It's writing a series of articles with a simplistic introduction as if to say there was a huge problem and therefore there was a unique solution.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Then he says: "There was no real ANC presence inside the country and the ANC could not legitimately claim to be the leading force behind the mass struggles taking place."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Again it's a statement being made from Tim who was stationed in London, who had been in prison and who had escaped from prison. Yes, he had escaped. Having got out of the prison, who helped him and his colleagues to get out of the country? Surely they didn't do it on their own. They were assisted by cadres in the country some of whom subsequently got arrested for assisting them in their escape. What does that indicate? It indicates a presence. But I would argue differently from the detail. What we were facing was that you would create 100 units of three to four people located inside the country in the political section. They would be active, arrests would take place, the number of units comes down to 80. You rebuild, you're continuing to create more units. Six months later you've got 100 units and looking at that you're saying we're not making progress. Why? Because the number of units operational are 100. What you're not seeing is 20 were arrested, 20 units were arrested, detained, tortured, some in prison, and a new 20 were created. So you're not seeing that ebb and flow and sometimes the number of units would increase to 130.</div>
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But we were saying what's impeding us from stabilising that situation and moving it to a much higher level? It was well for units, say an underground political unit, to be distributing X thousand leaflets, carrying out 20 leaflet forms per six months. That's fine but are you grappling with the serious strategic and tactical questions that we need now to bring those forces to act, to synchronise their activities. It's one thing to have 100 units each carrying out their action at their own time in their own conditions and their own security. But how do you, whilst keeping them secure from enemy arrest, how do you ensure that they all act in the same period so as to lift the level? How do you ensure that what the underground says in it's leaflet links to what the mass organisations are doing at mass mobilisation? How do you ensure that the military sections strike against targets which will enhance support for what the mass organisation is doing and what the underground is doing? This was the key problem.</div>
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So when he says there were these little things going on, the key question was, how do you implant a leadership not just from the external but a leadership made up of people from the external combining with the leadership on the ground?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>In a sense his point is saying, because I talked to Vuso Tshabalala and Tootsie Memela, both talked about the influence that they came under was Black Consciousness, the influence, that the Black Consciousness was there in the country, a presence, and that the ANC kind of was something they had heard about. So what he's saying is that there would have been many activists but he wouldn't say that the ANC itself is the legitimate organ of the struggle, that there are others who have a claim and perhaps even would claim they had an equal claim to legitimacy.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>That is a different question. The legitimacy question I'm addressing, there was no real ANC presence and therefore it follows -</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>The ANC could not legitimately claim to be the leading force.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I am saying there was an ANC presence. When he used the word 'real' presence, what does he mean in his mind? What would satisfy him to say there was a real presence? I am saying what I would regard as that, that a leadership responding on the ground to the tactical issue and feeding into the strategic issues. Now the legitimacy question is against a larger question. When Totsie and Vuso speak, are they speaking about the period when they came into political activity or are they talking about the whole period of their political activity?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>When they came in.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>When they came in. They would be talking about when they came in in 1975/76. Undoubtedly 1975 if you look at the ANC activities they were all leaflet bombs. There was no real military activity. The escalation of the ANC activities is in the post-Soweto wake. Right? And it is in the wake of that that the Totsies and the Vusos joined the ANC. What made them join the ANC if it was not perceived as legitimate? What made them join was the strategic issue that is in Mandela's essay in <span class="cItalic">Reflections in Prison</span>. Black Consciousness, you've done a fantastic job but now you have been banned in 1977, how are you going to cope with that challenge? He ends up that essay on Black Consciousness, <span class="cItalic">'Whither Black Consciousness?'</span> He says it's going to be your capacity to meet that challenge of having been made illegal that's going to determine how successful you're going to be. Can you answer that question? How did the Black Consciousness Movement respond to that challenge? I think history will show it failed and I think history will show that the ANC succeeded in responding to that challenge. Yes, we can give reasons embedded in the fact that the ANC had gone through all the pain, suffered all the setbacks from 1964 onwards and had learnt some lessons.</div>
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But to answer the question, post-1977 October with the banning of the BC, which period are we talking about the legitimacy? Now look at Tim's introduction. He's speaking about the mid-eighties, isn't he?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Yes.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Now by the mid-eighties look at the scene. Where is the BC as an organisation in the country? What has happened by the mid-eighties is that the UDF has emerged. We're still with the question how effectively it was providing leadership but the UDF has emerged. By 1985 COSATU has emerged. They for obvious reasons cannot say we are primarily sympathetic to the ANC but the debate took the form, are you BC or are you Chartists? That was the debate of the mid-eighties at home and in the UDF that debate had to take place until the UDF said, "We support the demands of the Freedom Charter." That was a coded debate going on: where are you aligned strategically?</div>
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So mid-eighties the UDF has now emerged as a force. COSATU has emerged as a force. There are some spectacular military actions and there is an increase of low-level military sabotage activity. There is an increasing presence of the ANC through its underground political, but the problem remains. It is uncoordinated. If the UDF calls for a particular form of national mass action, ideally the military units should be attacking targets that fit in with that campaign. Ideally the underground political section in its interaction, because its members of the underground are members of the overt organisation, should be driving all the opinions of the UDF to support that position of the UDF. Its leaflets should be speaking a language that flows from that campaign and taking it further.</div>
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Let's say by mention of legitimacy that he can retreat and say 'I was mentioning legitimacy inside the country', but legitimacy from the point of view of leading a national liberation struggle is not only defined by what you're doing inside, it's also defined by what you're doing outside. So when the BC people left the country whether conscious BC or just inspirationally driven by the BC, who did they find outside? They found two boys – ANC and PAC. Where did the most go to? They went to the ANC and to uMkhonto weSizwe. That was their response to legitimacy.</div>
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Third dimension outside, who was raising this issue internationally so that that fourth tier of struggle was being pushed? Unquestionably by mid 1984 it was the ANC, unquestionably. From the UN to British and the world anti-apartheid movement, to Sweden and even by 1984 into the United States. That meeting you talk about when Thabo and I met De Lange from the Broederbond, where did it take place? In New York. Under what guise? Under a conference called by the Ford Foundation where it called people from home, from the UDF, from the unions, from the civics and including Pieter de Lange. Who was invited then by Ford to come and speak also at the conference, at the seminar? The ANC. Was the PAC there? No. Was the BC there? No. Why? Because even in the eyes of the people organising that conference the ANC was seen as the legitimate voice.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>This was a conference in ?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>1984/85.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Called by the Ford Foundation?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Ford Foundation.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Who was the man, can you remember who was the organiser?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I forget his name at the moment. I've been trying to recall, but Nelson Rockefeller's granddaughter Peggy was involved in the Ford Foundation. It was not the only seminar and many people from home had got a message to say come out to this conference. That's now not from Ford but from us, from our underground. Come out to this conference, it will provide a cover for us to meet and we would be there. So often some of these things were held not at the initiative of Ford, it was by us individual interaction with people in the Ford Foundation saying call such a meeting, invite so-and-so, not telling them that that also provides us the cover to meet. We could do that.</div>
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How did the UDF meet Oliver Tambo and an ANC delegation in Stockholm? The UDF was invited by the Swedish government, the Labour Party of Sweden. They provided the venue and the logistics. Officially the UDF came out to meet and solicit support and aid for itself invited by the Swedish Labour Party. Unofficially what happened was that it provided the cover for a meeting led by the ANC president with the UDF leadership. Why were the people responding? Would the people from home take those risks to come out in order to meet somebody who they didn't regard as legitimate?</div>
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I am saying those opening statements are too wide. I am not defending it to the point we're saying that the ANC was now <span class="cUnderline">the</span> legitimate organisation, I think it was still partly contested terrain. I'm not defending myself by saying that we were carrying out enormous activity but I am saying that the introduction has so far failed to isolate what – I think the introduction is done graphically to say communications was the problem.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>He says: "Underground work up to that point had been largely in hit and run operations. Cadres were trained outside the country, briefed, equipped and sent inside on missions. They carried out their tasks and if not captured by the enemy returned to a sanctuary in one of the frontline states. A number of groups had tried to engage in more prolonged activity but the attrition rate was extremely high."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>That is a statement that is legitimate with regard to the military activity, not with regard to political.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"These were the armed propaganda years and the imperative was to concentrate on actions to keep alive the notion that the ANC was present and active in SA. Little attention was given to the setting up of internal structures that would have made the war self-sustaining."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Now that statement is made purely in military terms from the point of view of military units and it seems to conflate political underground units and military units into one bag. Military units necessarily had to be made up of people who had left the country, gone out legally or illegally, had trained and come back. Underground political did not have to depend substantially on a person coming out illegally and training outside because you did not need to have the skills for the use of arms. So that statement of hit and run and the armed propaganda is focusing on the military side. If you read the report, <span class="cItalic">The Four Pillars of Struggle</span>, I think that's 1982, the four pillars were defined as the masses in action, that's overt mass activity, the underground political activity, the armed activity and the international sanctions activity. Those were the four pillars. Now three of those pillars their roots had to be at home, mass struggle, underground political, armed struggle. You had to be rooted at home and I would agree that we were not sufficiently rooted.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>That's in terms of the armed struggle?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Yes, and even the political, even the underground political, were not well co-ordinated. We couldn't just send in, even Vuyo, with all his record you couldn't send him and expect that if sent a mail courier, he's hiding in Durban and he sends a courier to Jay Naidoo, General Secretary ofCOSATU to say, 'I am an underground ANC cadre infiltrating into the country, I need to meet you', do you think Jay Naidoo would respond?He would say, 'What risk am I taking? Is this an enemy agent trapping me?'</div>
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But when I got in did I have those problems? Never because they knew that I was in the National Executive and the risks they would raise but with my courier would go a message to say, 'I will secure your meeting me. This is how you must come to see me and I will secure how you get away from that meeting.' But the essential point is you needed leadership people in the country known to those people. If we said to Jay Naidoo, now my first meeting with Jay Naidoo was in Harare, it was a meeting between Joe Slovo, myself and him, Jay Naidoo who was Secretary of COSATU. We said there is a conference being organised by, I think, the ILO who will invite you but please don't send somebody else, you come yourself. He comes. A courier to the conference venue, 'Jay Naidoo, can you find a way to discretely come to the following venue. Joe Slovo and Mac Maharaj want to meet you quietly outside of the public eye.' He turns up and we have a political discussion. What would happen if he said, and I'm not deriding anybody, what would happen if the message went to Jay Naidoo to say, 'Totsie Memela wants to see you'? If he came what would be the nature of the discussion, where in the course of the discussion Totsie says, 'You know Jay I think we should be looking towards moving towards from small strikes to a national strike.' He'd say to Totsie, 'You take a hike. I'm taking the risk, you don't know the conditions at all.' But if a Joe Slovo sat down there and we tossed around and discussed the strategies he wouldn't say to Joe Slovo, go to hell. And Joe Slovo wouldn't put such a wild proposal.</div>
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I understand why Tim has written the article the way he's written it. Those are opinions that he has put in a very stark form in order to reach a singular justification of the critical nature of the communications network. But that's not what Vula was about. If we could have developed that laptop and sent it in to any junior would that have solved the problem? No it wouldn't solve the problem because the question was responding to the strategy and tactics developed outside, linking it and feeding into the strategies being developed inside the country and giving a feedback to the head office with an assessment how HO should re-look at its strategy and tactics. Now pre-eminently to me that's a function of high level leadership.</div>
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So the technical communications that Tim is writing about were crucial to the speed with which we did it and to creating this flow between outside and inside leadership but the technical still needed the right people to be used. And what I mean by right people, people who would be perceived and known to be leaders in the ANC outside, leaders in the military, leaders in the political section, otherwise you could not engage to give that feedback nor would outside rely on the assessment because it would be receiving conflicting assessments.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"Those sent into the country were the ANC", again he's talking the mid-eighties, "the ANC soldiers. The Generals remained at base. The soldiers had their orders so could not become autonomous agents, could not plan their own actions. If they had been able to do that they would have been made Generals. In any case their logistical supplies came from outside the country and because it was so difficult to get anything in, the scope of their operations was extremely limited. This was the crux of the problem. A rudderless army with no place to hide with no contact with its leaders and with extremely fragile lines of supply. This meant that actions were limited to solitary operations. There was no way this could develop into a sustained onslaught against the enemy. Only the number of actions could increase but because there were no Generals on the spot these could never be co-ordinated to achieve any strategic objective."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>He's understood the problem but he's still talking in pure military terms. The Generals and the soldiers. Yes. Yes and no. Yes if you are using Generals as leadership people and soldiers as not just an armed combatant because I think that an Elijah ..., president of COSATU, was as much a combatant as a person who came in with an AK or a limpet mine. I think that Archie Gumede as the president of the UDF was as much a combatant and a General. Your problem was that those Generals located in the leadership of the ANC and the Revolutionary Council, Tim is saying none of them were in the country.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"The number of armed incidents increased, so did the number of casualties. It is difficult to understand how it took the leadership so long to begin thinking about changing tactics but for ten years after the Soweto uprising this was the pattern of things. It was only after the Kabwe conference in 1985 that many came to acknowledge that there was something seriously wrong and that there had to be a serious radical change in tactics."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Yes, I think Kabwe was the watershed but it was preceded by the Vietnam delegation, the Green Book. It was preceded by the 1981 decision to set up Area Political Committees inside the country. It was preceded by the setting up of the Senior Organs in the frontline states and it was preceded by an effort to begin to send higher level cadres into the country.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Kabwe was in a way a catalyst.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Kabwe was not the catalyst. Kabwe was the capping of that process and formalising that, yes, to move forward we need to change dramatically. Kabwe then underlined that change.</div>
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The Kabwe conference brought in cadres from the camps, cadres from the frontline and some people from inside the country and it canvassed views in the country in the underground which were fed into the conference to arrive at a decision around what is holding back the struggle, there is a great need to escalate the struggle. One of the needs, so that we are not just attending to this in a lop-sided militaristic way, was to change the institution of the Revolutionary Council and replace it with a body called the Political Military Council. Notice the change, it is now emphasising that there is a direct and critical relationship between the political forms of struggle, both overt and underground, and the military forms of struggle. This council was then called the PMC. Many of the people who were in the Revolutionary Council were not put into the PMC. So if you looked at personalities you'd say, what change? But if you look at just the name change, the name change implied a strategic choice which said our struggle is not just an armed struggle. The Vietnam Report, the Green Book, that was one of the conclusions reached by the delegation that went to Vietnam.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"Everyone agreed that the underground was ineffectual because there were no proper underground structures that were structures and there were no structures because there were no leadership figures based in the country. Armed propaganda could not turn into a people's war because the groundwork had not been laid for rooting the liberation army among the people."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I think that's a fair enough statement. Well written style, punchy, but I think it's a fair point.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"Bringing leaders into the country however was only part of the solution. Even if leaders had been sent in the resources for carrying out the armed struggle would still have to come from outside the country."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Notice how he slips back to 'armed struggle'. It would have been to carry out the political/military struggle.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"And how would the leaders have co-ordinated their actions and issued their orders to the soldiers in the field?"</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Fair enough. Issued their orders, their orders and guidance to both the political, military and mass organisations and his guidance for mass organisations.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"The problem was not so much a political one about who was where and doing what, but a practical one about an almost complete lack of decent communications."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Fair enough. Decent communications, I agree with him. Whereas I've earlier said you can have the best communications techniques but if you didn't have the right people in the country they were pointless. In the same way you can have the right people in the country and if you didn't have effective communications, that would be good.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"It is astonishing that so few were able to see this as communications is the most important weapon in any conflict situation. Good communications means effective conduct of a struggle. Bad communications means ineffective conduct or defeat. Poor communications had determined the shape of our struggle because our fighters and cadres could not communicate with their leaders and between themselves, that the underground never developed and people's war never became a reality."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Struggles have taken place with more rudimentary forms of communications and have succeeded. There were no electronic communications systems in Vietnam, there were none in Cuba.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Or in Kenya.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>OK. But failure in Kenya was not necessarily communications. I understand the point he's making. In Zimbabwe using the old techniques of communications developed in the Vietnam and in other guerrilla struggles, an actual combatant would be taken in with a communication and he would meet the forces, the commanders in the different areas, and come back with their reply, physically moving in. What did the Selous Scouts do? Those techniques have been successful in Vietnam but the Selous Scouts and the … and it's there in one of the books on Zimbabwe. Youth come in, they capture you. Within 24 hours they tortured, intimidated, broke you. They sent you back with a response. They relied on the fact that when you returned to Maputo you would not disclose that you had now cracked and were working for the enemy. And ZAPU head office would respond to that message because it's supposed to be coming from the Field Commander who is saying, 'I am ready to receive 30 combatants around this and this week and they should come in through this route.' Thirty cadres come in, wiped out.</div>
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Yes, that was part of the terrain of warfare in guerrilla struggles where the authorities in power would try to capture your courier and turn him round. That's what happened to (Sean) John Hosey in the Moumbaris trial. (John Hosey the British youth communist.) A group of cadres had come into the country, they had been helped to settle in the country by Moumbaris.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>That's in Rhodesia?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>No here in SA. 1971/72/73. A group of ANC MK cadres came in. They settled, they were helped, collected a courier by Moumbaris, the Frenchman. So he collected them with rented cars from the borders. He transported them within the country. One of them got caught. Some of them got arrested. During the interrogation the police said to one of them, "How do you maintain contact with outside?" He says, "No, I was told if I sent a message, the following cryptic message, they will send in a courier or somebody to me." So, "OK, send the message. When they respond we can …"So under that torture he sends the message as he was told and he requests that a courier meet him at a certain spot in Stanger, in a public venue. The movement says this has come from a cadre who has just infiltrated the country, they get hold of John Hosey, or Sean Hosey a young British communist with fairly clean –<span class="cItalic"> (break in recording)</span></div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>You were saying Sean Hosey?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Comes into the country with the money and whatever responses. He goes to this place in Stanger, the contact venue, taking all the precautions he's been taught and what does he walk into? Into the arms of the Security Branch. Whatever communication he had brought in any concealed places are opened up. Whatever communication he brought to give verbally he's tortured and made to talk. Given the modern techniques of communications that were being developed in the electronic age it became possible to find a far more secure rapid means of communication so I agree with him about the importance of communication. I don't agree with him that we had no effective means of communication. We had them but they were from the old structures not taking into account the advances in the electronic age.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>He makes a statement:</div>
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"It is hard to explain why our leadership failed to grasp the importance of good communications especially as they were trying to lead the struggle by remote control. Perhaps it was that they were too used to seeing all the problems and solutions to problems in political terms that they were unable to see that the problem was to a large extent a technical one. Perhaps they had a fear of technical things, a suspicion of things they did not fully understand."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Again I understand the point, I sympathise with the point, I think it has a validity but I don't think that you can accuse the leadership of being wary of technical things. For example, we were now using radio controlled detonation devices, a highly technical job. If a car bomb was detonated with a remote detonator by radio control, it was high technology. We were using it. Yes, I think that the communication was not perceived as a central problem but what he doesn't know, because he's located in London, what he doesn't know is that different sections of our movement and different leaders were consulting the Soviets, the Germans, the Cubans, the Czechs to find newer and newer techniques of communication but our mind was fixed on radio. Yet at the same time in Lusaka in 1982 we brought in a computer purchased in Mexico and shipped via Canada and Britain. It wasn't one of these small things, it was one of these very big ones, and we brought a technician who had been in computers at Rolls Royce who was one of our members and built a special building where he slept and ate and drank and worked on that computer.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>This is in Lusaka?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>This is in Lusaka. Very few people knew about it. Then later on Ronnie becomes, by 1985, Military Intelligence. Ronnie recruits a unit and brings in computers but now the computer advances are moving so rapidly that you didn't need to buy what we had bought in Mexico. I remember the make, it was the Ohio Computers from the US, but we didn't want anybody to see that we owned it. Oliver Tambo had given us the money and we were saying we want to experiment, both data storage, data retrieval, etc. So we were experimenting. Maybe Tim didn't know about that but very few people knew that this was the sort of things we were doing.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>You bought in 1982 or 1985 and he wasn't aware of it?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>But the same thing was happening at radio technology. The military headquarters sent in the Broederstroom Group of Raymond de Lange and his group, they were arrested at Broederstroom in 1986. They had been sent in with radio communication technology, 1985/86, and it had an encryption device which was provided by the Soviets but it involved laying down a mast on an open terrain and that mast had to be about 20 metres long before you could transmit. It also involved hand encryption and then punching it in and then transmitting it in a radio burst.It involved a mobile transmission, transmitter and receiver in Angola. With that burst of radio a message would come through and then it required painstaking hand deciphering, listening to the signals and deciphering. That's hours of work to send one page.</div>
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When I am getting ready for Vula I investigate everything because of my position. I go to Ronnie Kasrils, I say, "I know you don't want to divulge your techniques. I have checked with the Soviets, you are using the following technique. Tell me, how does it work?" And he's of course cock-a-hoop because at the moment his unit is settled and communicating. That is costing thousands and thousands of rand and when he describes it, I said to him, "The encryption method", I see the burst of the transmission at the encryption and decryption and when he explains that I said, "Thank you very much", I don't tell him why. I go to the Soviets, I just say, "That technique is useless for me. I want a rapid encryption decryption, not just at transmission."</div>
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Only the Soviet General in Angola who knows me and he realises that Mac is on to something we can't pin down, it's not coming through the regular structures, he meets me, takes me to his flat. "What are you looking for?" Because I've been to Moscow obviously he's got reports that Mac is up to something, he's not telling us what he wants but he's wanting something. He says, "Mac", and he knows me to be also in the Politburo of the party, "I'll give you a tip, satellite communications." I say, "Hold on Ivanov, encryption, decryption, how's it done?" So we discuss and he provides a mechanical way of encryption. I say, "Good, if it's not mechanical what happens when you intercept that communication? Does it follow a pattern that decrypters can sit down and decrypt?" And we toss this around. I say, "Ivanov, you're giving me techniques that are already caught, that the Americans know. They've captured your systems.""No, no, no, this one is very secure." I said, "Where will this be received via satellite?" So he says, "Soviet Union.""Who will decrypt?" He says, "My people." So, very nice, thank you, I'll be going. I say I don't want my contact or my communications to be seen by people I don't know. I don't care whether they're in the Soviet Union.</div>
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That is why I say now, and it started off, Tim is wrong there, it started off – Ronnie was doing his data, using computers for data storage and retrieval, the military intelligence, and he was using radio communications for his units in the country.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>He was in London?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>In Lusaka, no he was in Lusaka at a secret house. But my wife had trained and worked as a computer specialist and I was constantly discussing it with her and she says to me, "You can use a computer for encryption and decryption." I said, "But problem, the technique of intercept is to look at patterns to decrypt and with computer technology I can feed in what would take the British headquarters in the second world war months of mathematicians and a bank of them working at it to decrypt. With a computer even random encryption can be broken within hours depending on the power of the computer you have." But I say I like the idea.</div>
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Then I learn of two comrades in London, Ronnie Press and Tim Jenkin. The one thing I know about Tim Jenkin, helluva inventive. The thing I know about Ronnie Press, although trained as a chemical engineer, also very inventive. And I go to London, I say, "Guys, how far are you guys up on computers?" And they start tossing ideas. I said, "Great! How much do you want to do the research?" And I discuss the encryption, decryption, transmission of data. And I say, "Let me study this, stretch out your ideas." They stretch it out. I go to Lusaka and I sit down with Zarina. "Zarina, what do you think of these ideas? You're a computer specialist, tell me, you're a mathematician", and we discuss. She throws in her ideas, I say," 'OK, how do I arrange everything? I'm going to call Tim Jenkin in London and I want you and Tim Jenkins to meet and have a discussion around these technical problems." Tim comes, meets her and I pull Tim aside and say, "Now, how did the discussion go?" "Yes, good ideas." "Good, go back to London. Carry on with your research. What are the resources you want? I don't want you to report to anybody. This is outside of that loop." That is how the Jenkins unit came up to developed the system that we used and when I came into the country the system was still not yet perfected.</div>
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My first communication was over an ordinary telephone line, unencrypted, and we had to buy a portable telephone because we had sent in couriers to test, to go into hotel rooms and plug onto the hotel telephone plugs, can you then transmit? Is it detectable? How fast can they detect it? How quickly are they able to intercept when they pick up that there is something fishy passing over the lines? How can they intercept computer reading? How can they? Can they monitor with mobile vehicles and pinpoint the transmission point? In pursuance of that sending in a Dutch woman we bought a portable telephone. In those days that big.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Was this the KLM - ?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>She was the storage person. She had to come and collect it. We picked up an advert for such a portable computer being sold in SA in the newspaper, in the classified column. We got a London person to buy it by an account that could not be traced. We had sent the Dutch stewardess to collect the computer and then put it in a storage place and having put it in a storage she then on one her trips had to go and retrieve it and deliver it to me. It was one of those huge portable telephones in those days. There were no cell phones at that time but within months we developed the acoustic coupler to link with any public telephone. We had developed now the encryption on a computer not based on just random numbers but based on the one side of the books and the other part would get wiped out. We developed that encryption which took seconds to type your message and pressed a button, it was encrypted and the part used for encryption was wiped out. London would be sitting with a counterpart of that.</div>
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The system being used is that if I use this book as my encryption I found references for the U in the code, I reduced it to page number, line number, position number. So three digits told you how to find that U. But that U you didn't have to open a book physically. In the old days you had to open the book physically and count to page 25, count the lines, five, six, seven and count the letters right up to that, it may be 15. Now the old principle was we changed the book every three months, but if you intercepted the communications over three months and punched it into a computer you had a chance of detecting it because the U was not always described as 25 line six position 25. You would take a U from here and there and different places so different bunches represented a U by going to that … We installed the book on a disk and as soon as it enciphered the computer wiped out that disk.I cannot decipher my own.</div>
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So message one comes through, it knows use pad A on the disk to access and decipher. The moment you decipher it wipes it out.Now you can't with all those disks decipher that message, it's gone, and I have changed the book with the next one. So you were changing the pad with every message. And there is no 100% foolproof method when it comes to decryption. What you did was you made it very, very difficult but given time and given a batch of communications with modern computer technology you always worked on the basis that with enough processing power on your computer, even if it took you a year, you probably could crack it. Now on computers – we did it like a simple document, it's there in the back. I can still pull it out in the machine language. So the process of completely deleting in modern computers is not just with the delete button.</div>
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So Tim and Ronnie became the core researchers for this technique and setting up the links abroad and my wife, unknown to them, was the one in Lusaka, because I wanted these minds not just to interact but having interacted I did not want what was emerging to be sitting all over the place. The receiving station did not know how the system (worked) but was to disperse where the signals were being sent and because the lines from SA, telephone lines, worked very well with the developed world. We could have phoned to Lusaka but we said the traffic of telephones to Lusaka is too low, so let's pick countries where there's heavy traffic, where we've got good supporters and let those be the receiving points and then re-transmit from London to Lusaka.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>So it would go from - ?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>From wherever I am in the country I would send either to London or Holland. Whoever picked it up would send it encrypted still to Tim, Tim would decrypt it and re-encrypt it so that nobody can see that the pattern is the same message and send it to Lusaka. That's how it worked.</div>
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Now if you read there, as far as my memory goes, he does not mention my wife at all.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>He doesn't, no. That struck me as kind of odd.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>No, because he didn't know, he didn't know what was happening. It's not out of malice or mischief. So I made Tim feel, Tim and Ronnie, feel that they were the heart.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>This is Ronnie Press?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Ronnie Press. But I never used to meet Ronnie Press even. I used to meet Tim alone. Now that's not a devious mind on my part, that's a fundamental rule of clandestine work.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>So when he says that:</div>
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"When this was put to the comrades that they were unable to see the problem was largely a technical problem, the comrades were involved in underground work, they all confirmed the lack of proper communications was the main hindrance to their work. They felt cut off and their activities could never develop into anything meaningful. The absence of proper communications meant there was a lack of political leadership."</div>
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That was his own experience, talking about himself. "… underground operative in the mid-seventies confirms this. Contact was so infrequent and irregular that most of the time we felt we were operating in a vacuum. There's no doubt that our poor communications contributed to our arrest as was the case for countless others."</div>
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He goes through … speaking of Ronnie Press.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Who met Ronnie Press?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>He said in the early eighties he met Ronnie Press – "and a few others in the UK as part of the ANC Technical Committee body tasked to provide technical assistance to the armed struggle."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Now doesn't that conflict with what he is saying earlier about technical, the leadership not - ? It's the leadership that set up that technical committee. It's the leadership that provided the resources for that technical committee. It's earlier put too simplistically.</div>
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At which point now? Ronnie and them?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Yes, "In 1984 when … "</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>1984, right, we began to work with modems, modern technology was coming in. This is which Ronnie now? Kasrils?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>This is Ronnie Press. " … were low enough I lashed out and bought my first computer. It was quite a pathetic machine by today's standards but it gave me the opportunity to learn how to write elementary computer programmes."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>And the encryption.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"Then one day Ronnie arrived with the modems."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Right. Now that's Ronnie Press. Then Ronnie gets to Zambia.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>He said, "We managed to set up a link between London and Bristol where Ronnie lived."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>On one of our regular trips Ronnie took the computer and modem to see if he could communicate with Lusaka. Fine.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"We continued to improve our communications but without appropriate application it did not progress very far. … appeared to be loyal, bridging the gap between ourselves and leaders inside the country."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>OK. Then … in 1984.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"We received a request as members of the Technical Committee to find a way for activists to contact each other safely in an urban environment. Ronnie had been seeking a paging device that could be used between users of …""In 1987 I was called down to Lusaka to train a group of activists in the use of some specialised radio equipment."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Now that was for Ronnie Kasrils and Joe Slovo.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"While there I was approached by Mac Maharaj, now Minister of Transport. He had heard that we had been experimenting with computers and various methods of secret communications."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Now, that's where I'm locating it. I am already preparing for Vula. I am working on communications with Zarina, trying to solve the communication problem and I'm clear what are the key problems beyond transmission. Ronnie Kasrils and Joe Slovo, Joe Slovo it was special operations, Ronnie Kasrils through military intelligence, and Jackie Selebi (the wife of Joe Modise) is head of communications. She's working with radio communications and her radio communications are from the camps to Zambia. I'm aware of all this and I hear that Tim Jenkins is in town and they are working on computers. I have now dismissed the Ronnie Kasrils idea. I've dismissed in mind the Jackie Selebi … I'm convinced that the solution is in computers so I meet Tim Jenkins.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"Mac visited me in London and explained that the ANC was planning to send leading figures into the country. This could not take place until a suitable communication system was in place."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>In Lusaka I don't discuss, I just hear from him, I question him. I don't link him with Zarina. I go back and I say, "Now, what do you think of these ideas?" I assess it and then I go to London. He's the right chap. I've now cleared with the people to whom the Technical Committee is reporting, Joe Slovo. Having cleared with him I want to engage with Tim Jenkins and Ronnie Press, I will not engage with Ronnie directly but I will engage with Tim but I want an assurance that whatever they do with me they will not communicate to anybody else in the organisation. So I go to London and I tell him, "We are planning to send leadership, this is a very sensitive question. I will resource you to experiment but I have the authorisation to tell you, you are not to divulge this to others. You are not even to record in the Technical Committee that I have seen you." That's how they come in and I ride into the progress that they have made in their experimentation.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"By chance a friend gave me an acoustic coupler that he was about to throw out. I doubted whether the encryption programme could work with the acoustic modem (and a) tape recorder.This I took to a public telephone booth and played it back to my answering machine. Then I played the answering message back to me into the modem and the computer deciphered it successfully."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Now the key to the acoustic coupler was that it now brought in the capacity, you did not have to rely on a direct telephone line linked to your modem. It now enabled you to put it to encrypt the message on a tape recorder and take the tape recorder with this acoustic copy and couple it …you dial the number, connect it to the acoustic coupler here, dial the number and as soon as it rang on the other side you press your tape recorder to play and it sent that out. That made it impossible now to prevent external noise getting in, but it made it possible – think of it, I'm in the country when they developed the acoustic coupler. I look at this thing, I say, "Why must I go into a hotel room? I'll go to a public call box right there in the open." These public call boxes have just got a phone on the wall, just a little divider and it's all open. I said that looks very innocent, nobody clandestine is expected. You would think that a clandestine person is hiding in some hole. So I'll be able to transmit from Durban beachfront, public telephones in Johannesburg, at the Post Office, at any time as long as I could put the tape recorder in my pocket, have my finger on the button, take out this coupler, do like I'm talking and just fit it on and press the button. Anybody standing behind me thinks I'm in a conversation. That's how it happened.</div>
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Alright, now what questions have you got? The technical parts you can read easily and see whether they develop your understanding of how it worked.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"At this time I was introduced to Conny Braam, head of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement."<span class="cItalic"> </span>Now is that the same Conny Braam that wrote a book on Vula?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Yes. She doesn't understand Vula at all. Her book is completely off – it is from her understanding.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>I was going to go and get the book, get a translation.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I've got it in Dutch. I've looked through it. She doesn't know but she tries to explain the history and everything. She doesn't know the facts.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>" …most exciting to find out that radio telephones had just been installed in SA. The radio telephone would be so useful that it would be essential to get one. There was one in the country who was going to get the phone and it was going to cost about R16,000. There was no-one in the country who could get a phone that was going to cost around R16,000. Fortunately Conny had managed to find a second KLM hostess who was working on the Amsterdam/Johannesburg route. She was willing to do just about anything for us."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>She wasn't. She was willing to certain safe things. She was not prepared to move arms. She only later on was prepared to move arms after interacting with me in the country.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>How was she vetted?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>At Schipol Airport in those years the crew never went through a screening.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>At Schipol? That's where?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Amsterdam Airport. So as the crew they were not subjected to a screening search there and when they landed in Jo'burg they were not subjected to a screening search also.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>So this is this apartheid government with all its magnificent security apparatus and agents all over the place simply allow people – crew from aeroplanes to walk in and walk out?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Go now, go to Jo'burg Airport, they do work through a screening now but they go through a special door, they don't go through the normal passport control. That crew, they just come in and they pass through rapidly, their passports, no problems, no hassles, just a rapid transit. But in those days at Schipol they were not even subjected to a screening search, nor were they subjected to a screening search in Jo'burg. We forget technology, we assume today's technology was present in those days.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>So she would take in:"I went to Amsterdam to find out if she was willing to go on a special shopping trip for us to get the phone. It was a honour to be asked, pleased that she would be doing more exciting things than pure courier work. I had to convince the telephone supplier in Johannesburg that I was a British businessman who needed the telephone for my business and that a friend would be passing through Johannesburg to make the purchase for me"'</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>That's right. That's the portable one. And as he describes it now more correctly it was based on radio communication.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"On Vula and in London we made this link and began to make the first preparations to start with Vula. Among those who were in this group was Mac Maharaj. Vula starts in the early months of 1988 and Maharaj and Gebhuza were ready themselves to be infiltrated into the country in the first group of Vula operatives. So tight had the security around these preparations been that no-one doubted that they were about Mac and Gebhuza." That was when you were going on your 'illness'.</div>
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"They had been well prepared with a range of professional disguises and false documents. A route had been worked out and prepared to reach SA from Zambia."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Now that part, again he will become weak. He's right, the two had been prepared with a range of professional disguises. That he would know, the Dutch part because it was through Conny Braam's contacts in the theatre world so Tim would know the disguise part. False documents he would assume because the false documents were not prepared by London or Holland. Those were done with Moscow. What else? A contorted route.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"An extremely contorted route had been worked out for the pair to reach SA from Zambia. Indeed they would depart from the Soviet Union where their appearances and identities would be radically altered."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Correct. That he would have been told by Joe Slovo.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"They would even leave a trail so that people could confirm that they had been in that country. From Moscow they would fly to a few European cities to fuzz the trail from where they could move on to East Africa and ultimately to Swaziland where they would be assisted to hop the border into SA."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>That partly he would again know but not intimately because we sent him to travel through various European airports to give us a report what's the set up at each airport.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>You sent Tim?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>We sent him and people through him. He would be in charge of sending people, take an ordinary British citizen, take a South African who's not connected with the movement and through Tim's contacts pay for him to go to Athens. When he comes back from Athens sit down and have a chat with him, ask him what were his experiences, what happened. In that way what we detected was that at Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, was the easiest place to arrive on a flight with one passport under one name, not go through immigration, change your identity, change your passport in the transit lounge, it was very busy airport, but also obtain a ticket under your new name for the next leg. So you arrive from Brussels as John Smith and without leaving the airport you change your name to Andrew Johnson and pull out a concealed passport, Andrew Johnson, and bought a ticket still inside the airport as Andrew Johnson. That was a very difficult exercise because you couldn't book through a travel agent a ticket that said – John Smith to Amsterdam, changes to Andrew Johnson. So you had to do the booking separately but I could walk over to the passenger counter provided I was first class ticket and the chap did not look at your passport to ask you on which flight did you arrive? Because if he asked you on which flight did you arrive, because remember you are inside the airport, so the trick was to buy a first class ticket and be dressed like –</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>You would be treated with deference.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Dressed like a real wealthy businessman and just walk over to the internal passenger counter and say, "I'm Andrew Johnson, my secretary has booked a ticket for me to collect here for Nairobi.""Yes sir, yes sir, I'll check on my computer. Can I see your passport?" Only sees page 1, looks at the photograph, looks at you.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>But there would nothing in his computer that you had booked the flight would there?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>There would be that a travel agent from, say, London booked the flight but the behaviour was different towards a first class passenger.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>They're even doing that now in the US where they have separate lines for people who are to be searched and –</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Sure. If I'm Al Qaeda –</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>How do they think terrorists are going to travel? Economy class? They've already told them …they'd be walked through.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>So I arrive from Brussels as John Smith on an economy class, a ticket booked by a travel agent in Frankfort, I'm now inside Schipol, I take out my passport as Andrew Johnson, I go to the passenger service, to the first class passenger service, and say a booking was made by my secretary in London. They don't say, "Let's see your passport. Which flight? Which flight have you arrived on?" You're first class, they don't ask you all those funny questions.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>"As Mac and company would not have the computers on arrival in SA they were due to be smuggled in later. A date in the second week of August had been set up for Mac to meet Antoinette at KLM. She was going to hand over the radio telephones she had earlier acquired. Suddenly one day in the first week of August the pager began to bleep. Could this be the start of Vula or just a wrong number? Sure enough, the familiar voice of Mac played out on the voice mailbox. He wanted to clarify some of the fine details about the planned meeting with Antoinette but more than that it was a message to tell us that they were safely in the country. I quickly informed Lusaka of the good news. The meeting with Antoinette went successfully and Mac got his telephone."</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Right. We need to stop there.Sorry, I have to move on to another appointment.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>OK.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I just want you to be clear about one thing, Padraig, there is no – the chaps writing their stories, even Conny, they are not lying but they are writing from their little box and they then extrapolate and put their rationale in, so it makes sense to them. The preparations both for the entry and the communications were so intricate that I never allowed the information to sit in one box. The photograph of the passport on which I left Moscow, Joe Slovo and Shubin (Shubin was our Soviet contact), Joe Slovo when he saw the photograph he was there to say, before we left he was there for final briefing, and he says, "Is everything OK?" And Shubin was saying, "Here, here are their passports all ready." And when he looked at the passports, I remember Joe saying, "Shubin, can you put these photographs in the archives?" And I'm saying, "No, why?" Joe says, "For history, for history." And then I succumb, I say OK. There are supposed to be a safe archives maintained by the Soviet Communist Party for the SACP, don't know what happened to them. Those photographs were the appearance under which we left Moscow airport. The appearance that we adopted in Schipol was different.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>You had to do this changeover in the men's room?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>In the toilet, in the men's toilet, the men's washroom. And all your disguises, your false moustache, your false teeth, your false pass, your next passport, that passport would take you from Amsterdam to Swaziland. At Swaziland we destroyed those passports. Gone. One of the breaches of the underground was the cadre who wanted to keep it for history. Chris April who served 15 years got caught for that reason. He was told, he flew into Jo'burg airport in 1970, he was told once you're through Jo'burg airport destroy that passport. While he was training in the GDR he was given a watch. When he was leaving he was told to get rid of the watch. He hid it in his bags. When he jumped off at Jo'burg airport he kept his passport, settled down in Durban, accidentally gets arrested and is suspected. The police raid him. They search his room, up pops the passport. You're not that innocent person, look here, you flew into Jo'burg. You're detained. They search more, tell us your background. So he's trying to lie to them. In his property they find a watch, unusual, it's a German one. They check what German. No it's East Germany. Ah, where did you get this watch? Finished.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>Now with the passport that you came into Schiphol on from Moscow, would you have destroyed that passport?</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>At Schiphol.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>So you just come in on one passport.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Destroyed it and got rid of it.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>And then you destroyed a second passport.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>Yes. You had to have that discipline.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-87640493997655828932016-03-20T12:45:00.001-07:002016-05-30T04:13:36.062-07:00Vula: Ronnie Kasrils according to Maharaj <div class="pInd00-12-T12" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.15em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
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<span style="font-size: 1.15em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.4em;"> Ronnie Kasrils and Operation Vula</span></div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM - O Malley, South African History Archives</span></div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM - Mac Maharaj</span></div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>I'm conscious of the time.I won't say the story was so funny but since you'd said, or recounted last week, that is the entry of Ronnie Kasrils into Vula because I had just finished going through <span class="cItalic">Armed and Dangerous</span> again and there is a slight disjuncture between your account of his entry and his movements and yours. If you could just tell it the way you told it the last time, we'll edit it down. It was just so funny.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>We'll see how we'll use it at the end. I don't think that the purpose of any writing should be to destroy a person.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>But it's funny.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>The question of Ronnie joining the team was settled.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">POM </span>You were looking for Jacob Zuma.</div>
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<span class="cBold" style="font-weight: bold;">MM </span>I had recommended that they give us Jacob Zuma knowing that Chris had been earmarked from the start of Vula for Cape Province and knowing Natal and the problems in Natal also I thought that Jacob Zuma was the right person. In my meeting in Moscow with OR, OR explained to me that he could not release Zuma. He was one of the few Zulus in the leadership and by that time he was heading the ANC Intelligence section and he had just been brought in as head of ANC Intelligence, so he could not spare him. The upshot of that discussion was that he and I and Joe Slovo agreed that he would release Ronnie Kasrils. So in Lusaka Joe Slovo, Ronnie and I, Joe Slovo had obviously told Ronnie already that he is selected. By this time OR had his stroke. Whether OR called in Ronnie, as he said, and spoke to him I don't know but I know that Joe Slovo was certainly one more person and that I am introduced to Ronnie in Lusaka as having been informed by Joe Slovo. That's where we discussed that I had been at home all this time, that Ronnie has now been selected to join me and the team at home, and I had already stipulated that if Ronnie is to be sent I don't want him to go for any further training. My view was already very firm that all the training we were receiving while at a rudimentary level was useful, I don't believe that the application of that training could be taken further by more intensive training abroad, we needed training on the ground to come to grips with the realities here.</div>
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So the first issue that arose was how then we were to prepare Ronnie's legend and how we were to prepare his entry and within what time frames. From my point of view it needed to be done tomorrow because there's no further training. We agreed to meet within a day or two where Ronnie would have thought through and mooted some proposal about his legend of disappearing and how he would enter the country. When we met him next time we tossed around and concluded on a legend which would be that he was going to go to Vietnam on a visit and that it would be reported that he's met an accident in Vietnam while travelling around Vietnam seriously injured and therefore hospitalised. We thought that we would be able to find a convincing legend on that basis because he would have to fly to Vietnam, through Moscow and could disappear anywhere on that route and Vietnam being so remote an outpost it would be possible to sustain that later.</div>
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The question of entry home became problematic and became quite a tussle because the mechanisms that he was advocating were very complex and required enormous support structures. Finally I challenged him by saying that you've got forged passports, you've used them for travelling in and out of Swaziland, do you have any that you can use for SA? And he had. I then said, "Fly into Jo'burg airport." He was sceptical of it until I said, "But how am I here? I do two things. I cross on foot otherwise I fly in and out of Jo'burg airport. That's how I do it." He insisted then that if it was to be by flying in that the critical question was who would be there to meet him and the condition he put in that discussion was that I should personally be there. I found that very difficult because I found that completely contrary to the underground rules. Here was a person known outside coming in, he could lead to us and there were we, a network inside the country, up to that stage undetected by the regime. So any element that would bring instability and detection would come from that side, from his entry, rather than from our side and our protection should be to protect first the network and then secure his entry. But he insisted that I should be there. He felt he wouldn't be safe unless I'm there. And we agreed on it.</div>
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Part of the agreement was that he would give me the day he would be coming, the airline he would be coming and the time of arrival so that I could ensure that there is surveillance and protection at Jo'burg airport. As it happened we knew he was coming in through, I think, Austrian Airlines, the last leg of his flight was going to be from Vienna and it would have probably been Vienna or Egypt, he could have taken a hop to Egypt and come in on Al Italia. We didn't get the precise date. We got the airline as far as I recall but we didn't get the date and time of arrival. This meant that we had to go to Jo'burg airport two or three days running, taking the enormous risk of my own exposure to receive him.</div>
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The second thing was that in the arrangements we had said that he would have to find his own way by public transport with those courtesy coaches to get to Sandton Holiday Inn and that he would find under his door that night a message saying where and what time he should be at some other spot the next day. That such a message would be put in if conditions are safe. If conditions are not safe, if we have detected detection of him and any danger signals then in the absence of a message he should simply get out of the way to Botswana and live there quietly while we re-establish contact to get him in safely.</div>
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We see him arrive, we see him go to Holiday Inn, we see that everything is safe and we slip a note to him that the next day, I think it was about 10 – 11 in the morning, he should find his way from Sandton by taxi to Hyde Park and then he should walk down Jan Smuts Avenue heading towards Randburg. If you are heading from Hyde Park to Randburg he should walk, it's a dual carriage highway, and he should walk on the pavement on the right hand side. That is the pavement where the traffic was coming in the opposite direction. This would help him with regards to any surveillance and it would help us if we detected surveillance how to get him away because any surveillance by a vehicle would be moving down the opposite lane, any surveillance by foot would be very easily detected because it's a gentle downhill. After about two kilometres walk he would come to a spot where he would see a Wimpy Bar across the road. Now this Wimpy Bar is situated on a hill so that when you're in the Wimpy Bar you're looking out into the whole road with a broad view. So in that Wimpy Bar he would find a person and make contact with him.</div>
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But again he had stipulated that I should meet him, so it became my job to meet him. I didn't want to expose him to others so my surveillance of him, my own security was very limited to people. I think Gebhuza was in Durban at that time and I didn't want people to know it's Ronnie Kasrils. But as I drove down on the opposite lane and came up in different routes I saw that his walking behaviour was such that it already looked like a person who feels he's doing something shady, constantly looking over his shoulder. There are none of these shop windows, it's just bare veldt besides there and a few buildings, deep recessed buildings, houses, etc., and some office blocks, but none of them with windows on the pavement that he can use and this James Bond thing where you look in the window and you can see the back and you're not turning around. But here he was constantly looking over his shoulder and I came to the conclusion that this was becoming too risky. So I drove on the lane on his side, coming up towards him. I was alone in the car driving, drove up in the car and pulled up directly next to him and leaned over, opened the passenger door and asked him to jump in. He was taken aback and it's only when I talked to him that he began to recognise my voice. I said, "Get in, get in! Don't waste time."</div>
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So he jumped in the car, I took him to this hideout in Rosebank, the garage, not the one where the trap door is, the garage with the Canadian couple, said to him, "Now look, Ronnie, we live in this garage. It's got a shower, kitchen, all the basics of life, nothing luxurious." An old car garage converted into a bed sitter, a kitchenette, a toilet and a shower and opening out into a back yard, garden. I said, "The front house is occupied by a foreign couple." I think I must have mentioned the Canadian couple. "But they don't know my identity but they are comrades whose job is to secure us renting places, but they don't know our identity and we stay away from them so that if anything ever went wrong no intimate relations can be established to have existed between us", and, as I've explained earlier, I'm just a tenant who had responded to a newspaper advert. I might have even said that they were members of the Canadian Communist Party. I said to him, "Now relax, you've travelled, you've been living under some tension. Here you can relax, be in the garden, everything is there. I'm going out on work, I'll be back later in the afternoon."</div>
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When I come back in the afternoon the couple in the front house are excited. I don't think they are doing anything wrong. They say, "This is fantastic", they had been leading a very lonely life. I never sat and even had a meal with them but here they said, "Here's this comrade and he's Ronnie Kasrils, the Ronnie Kasrils." I said, "What do you mean? What do you mean? What do you know about him?" "No he told us"' "When did he tell you?" "No, he's been sitting with us, we've been chatting for hours." Completely contrary to the rules. I go into the garage and I'm already fuming over all this whole build up and I'm due to have a discussion with him, "Why didn't you communicate the information to us so that we could do the operation meeting?" And when I walk in I find tins of mussels open, empty, he's eaten. Now these were not in the storeroom. I said, "Where did you get that?" He's excited, he says, "I've had a wonderful meal." "But where did you get these mussels from?" "No, I went out and shopped."</div>
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I said, "Sit down, Ronnie, let's discuss."And I put my criticism, my observations. I said, "I'm making these criticisms that you're now living in the real world of danger, in a real underground. You're not living in Angola, not in Lusaka where you have the government shielding you. Here you are in the belly of the enemy. You are a specialist MCW, you're going to be training other people. How do you handle this? Let's talk about the principles of it. What's the principle in how you came in? I don't want to fight with you.This risk to take charge of receiving you at Jo'burg, but I've taken it, it's a great risk to the structure because if I get caught and I break down under torture I reveal the network. You get caught, you reveal me. Firstly, you didn't tell us the day you were coming, you didn't tell us the time of arrival and you forced us to go backwards and forwards. Secondly, I picked you up in the road because I felt that your conduct was indicative that you were concerned about something. So rather than wait for you to go in the Wimpy Bar and extend the danger I decided to do something by intercepting you quickly. And I bring you here and I brief you and as soon as I go away out you go as soon as the neighbours arrive, you go and talk and you tell them that you're Ronnie Kasrils. Here's all the food, yes it's bread and butter and cheese and tomatoes, but the first thing you think about is your own stomach, you don't think about the security of this place which is my personal hideout. So it's not known to people and by walking, even though you're disguised, what you're doing is you're endangering us, you haven't even reconnoitred, you haven't asked me for a briefing as to what is the way to conduct yourself in this environment. If underground operatives do it this way and you teach them, what happens to the structure? Within days it's gone."</div>
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That was a very harsh discussion but the next thing after we discussed that quite harshly and the issue that arose was personally so critical of him, I then said to him that in the light of the situation the plans were that he should now go down to Durban and there he would meet Gebhuza and a fairly viable structure, command structure, political, military, properly constituted military committee and properly constituted political structure, a very good intelligence network, a good propaganda network and a widespread network. So I said, "Now, the idea is that you go down to Durban and you work in those structures for a few months. It's the best way to acclimatise you and get you to grips with the problem." OK, he was very happy because he used to be in Durban years before he left the country in 1964/65, so he was very happy with that prospect.</div>
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But then he raised the question of how he was to go down to Durban. I said we'd provide him with a car and he would drive down and he immediately began to raise questions about firearms and escort. So I tell him, "Again, let's go back to your underground rules, you've got a British passport, you're a tourist. Your legend is you're a tourist. How do I give you an illegal Makarov pistol? If you are stopped at any roadblock and they search you, a pistol contradicts the legend of this passport. That's out." And he could not comprehend that at times I would be travelling with no firearm. I said, "But you can't use it. Once you do your legend and have other things on youthat undermine your legend." So his fallback was, "What about an armed escort?" I said, "Where are we living? We're not living in Angola. We're here, there's no space to be moving around in convoys and armed escorts." He found it unacceptable. So I said, "Look, I'll be meeting you there. I'llbe on the road." So he said, "But then somebody must be with me in my car." And the upshot was that I offered him Janet Love. I said, "I'll give you a driver. It'll fit your legend. She's white, you're white. You look like a couple and she has got a legend also that she's a tourist from abroad. She's got passports so she's a tourist, you're a tourist. You've met up and you're travelling as a couple." He was very happy with that when I said Janet would be there.</div>
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We made arrangements that we would meet outside the last toll plaza on the way to Durban which is on the outskirts of Durban, called Marionhill, but on the route I said our paths would criss-cross, I would overtake them at times just to see everything's all right and then slow down and they would go ahead but we should not talk to each other or do like we know each other. So we would not be travelling one behind the other. The last time I saw them was at the Harrismith filling station. I had pulled in there and found that they were already there, obviously they were filling up, relaxing, it's an open garage, restaurant, other facilities. I saw them there, I filled up and decided I should leave before they did. I should not be in front of them to see how's the terrain. Before I reached Tugela Pass or after Tugela Pass, either before or after, it's now very open flat terrain, it's the Natal Midlands, you're out of the Drakensberg, and we can see ahead on that road, on that dual carriageway, for kilometres behind you and in front of you and beside of you. No trees, no forest. I'm getting tired, feeling sleepy and decide I'll park on the open road, on the shoulder. They obviously had to go past me. It's so isolated and bare that they would see me and that even if they stopped with concern there would be no risk, they could see whether there are cars behind them, they could see whether there were oncoming cars and they could investigate and that way I would be up.</div>
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I dropped asleep comfortable thinking I don't need to set an alarm or anything and I woke up late in the afternoon, hours later and nobody had stopped. So I looked at my watch and said, "Good God, three, four hours have elapsed."By now we should have been in Durban. I speculate what's happened, have they been arrested? Have they had a car accident? Are they in hospital? What has happened? So I drive back on this dual carriageway all the way back to Harrismith trying to see whether anything untoward has happened. Then I drive back now on the highway on my side, on the side that they would have been travelling and I return to the spot where I had fallen asleep. No sign of accidents, no sign of any untoward activity. I say to myself, "Bastard, they passed me and they didn't even see me." And if they saw me in my vehicle then I'm even more worried that they didn't bother to stop to check. But now Marionhill is 230 odd kilometres away so they are supposed to be standing waiting there in a very open car park with no restaurants, nothing, it's at the toll plaza. The sort of cars that stand there are somebody who wants to go to the toilet or somebody who wants to stretch their legs because they're tired, but you don't have a car standing there for three, four hours unless it's broken down.</div>
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So I now break the traffic rules, speed, am in a hurry to get to Marionhill because it's the next point I'll find out whether there's danger or if something has happened. I get to Marionhill, it's already dark. There's no car there. Now I'm worried about their safety. So I push on to Durban and I go to Mo Shaik, the security guy, the intelligence guy, "Mo, anything unusual, any signs amongst the Security Branch something is happening?" He has his ways to check, he says, "Nothing, Security Branch are going on as normal." Then I say, "Have you heard from Janet?" because Mo and Janet were in touch. He says, "No." No pager messages? No. Those were before the cell phones. Now I say to myself, the house where we were to accommodate him was – a Dutchman had come in and had hired a place. I didn't know the location of the house, so I say, "Is it possible that Ronnie has gone there and that therefore he has made some independent arrangements behind my back with this Dutchman?" That's the only shot I've got, there's no other place where do I find him. If Janet has acquired a pager in Durban I don't know her number to send a pager message to signal to. So in that desperate situation I turn to Mo, "Do you know of a foreigner who is occupying a clandestine house and that house is unused?" "Oh", he says, "Yes, I think there is a house like that. A foreigner, possibly a Dutchman." I said, "Yes." Oh yes, the following address.</div>
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So I go it's there after eight at night, eight, nine. I'm taking a chance, I'm exposing myself and in the underground rules what do you do when a stranger walks in and you're hiding, you've got a safe house and a stranger unknown to you walks in and says - has a couple arrived here? Your first suspicion is that these are policemen.Anyway I take the chance, I go there and because I know something of his background I ring the bell and I ask if I can come in and I sit down with him and I spend a few minutes talking to him establishing my bona fides. I then say to him, "Has a couple come through here?" And he says, "Yes." I said, "Where are they?" "Don't know, they went out. I think they've gone to a restaurant." I said, "Do you know a pager number for any of them, where I can reach them?" He says, "Oh yes." So he makes a call on the pager to Janet to call him back urgently and Janet after a few minutes calls and he hands the phone to me and I say, "Where are you guys?" She says, "We're at the beachfront in a marvellous restaurant having a lovely meal." I said, I am now really angry, "I want you to be here in half an hour." "Can't we see you after?" I said, "No ways, you come immediately." And they come. I take them in a separate room away from the Dutchman and I say, "What is this, this conduct? You seem to be unconcerned whether something has happened to me. You seem to be living in a world where everything is running smoothly. Did you ever think that I might have met an accident? We were supposed to meet at Marionhill. I'm not there and maybe you waited for a long time. Don't you think, wait a minute, he's arrested or he's in an accident, he's in a hospital, and if any of those thoughts hit you would you be sitting and eating in a restaurant? Wouldn't you see danger coming to you?" Another bit of discussion. Of course Janet felt shameful and it transpired that all that happened is that they didn't even notice me by the roadside. They had been so interested in chatting with each other and Ronnie so excited to be at home that all the antennae to tell you to look for danger and unusual signs were forgotten.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-82772956588396757482015-03-31T08:00:00.000-07:002016-03-21T04:05:58.251-07:00Talking To Vula / Tim Jenkins<h1 align="center" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427808934078_17028" style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; margin: 0.67em 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<span style="color: maroon;">Tim Jenkins: </span><span style="color: maroon;">Talking To Vula</span></h1>
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The Story of the Secret Underground Communications Network of Operation Vula</h2>
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by <a data-rapid_p="1" href="mailto:timj@anc.org.za" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Tim Jenkin</a></div>
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<i id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427808934078_17031">The following item appeared as a series of six articles in the ANC's monthly journal <a data-rapid_p="2" href="http://www.anc.org.za/pubs/index.html#MAYI" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mayibuye</a> from May 1995 to October 1995. They are brought together here to present the complete picture.</i></div>
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The Importance of Good Communications</h3>
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In the mid-'eighties there was a great deal of soul-searching taking place in the ANC. While there had been some spectacular armed attacks against the apartheid regime, the underground struggle had not really taken off. There was very little to show for the years of struggle, only hundreds of activists in the enemy's jails and the loss of tons of precious weaponry.</div>
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Discussion raged among comrades at all levels about why the armed struggle had achieved so little and why there was no real underground to speak of. True, mass resistance had reached unprecedented levels and much of this was attributed to the courageous work of ANC activists who had been infiltrated back into the country. Nonetheless, there was no real ANC presence inside the country and the ANC could not legitimately claim to be the leading force behind the mass struggles taking place.</div>
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Underground work up to that point had largely been hit-and-run operations. Cadres were trained outside the country, briefed, equipped and sent into South Africa on missions. They carried out their tasks and, if not captured by the enemy, returned to the sanctuary of one of the frontline states. A number of groups had tried to engage in more prolonged activity but the attrition rate was extremely high.</div>
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These were the armed propaganda years and the imperative was to concentrate on actions to keep alive the notion that the ANC was present and active in South Africa. There could be no stopping, as a hiatus would be interpreted as defeat. Little attention was thus given to the setting up of internal structures that would have made the war self-sustaining.</div>
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Those sent into the country were the ANC's soldiers. The generals remained at base. The soldiers had their orders, so could not become autonomous agents who could plan their own actions. If they had been able to, that would have made them the generals. In any case, their logistical supplies came from outside the country and, because it was so difficult to get anything in, the scope of their operations was extremely limited.</div>
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This was the crux of the problem. A rudderless army with nowhere to hide, with no contact with its leaders and with extremely fragile lines of supply. This meant that actions were limited to solitary operations. There was no way this could develop into a sustained onslaught against the enemy. Only the number of actions could increase but, because there were no generals on the spot, these could never be coordinated to achieve any strategic objective.</div>
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As the number of armed incidents increased, so too did the number of casualties. It is difficult to understand how it took the leadership so long to begin thinking about changing tactics but for ten years after the Soweto uprising this was the pattern of things. It was only after the Kabwe Conference in 1985 that many came to acknowledge that there was something seriously wrong and that there had to be a radical change in tactics.</div>
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Everyone agreed that the underground was ineffectual because there were no proper underground structures and there were no structures because there were no leadership figures based in the country. 'Armed propaganda' could not turn into 'people's war' because the groundwork had not been laid for rooting the 'liberation army' among the people.</div>
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Key leadership figures had not been sent into the country because it had always been deemed too dangerous to do so. There was a kind of vicious circle in operation: leaders could not go in because there were no underground structures in place to guarantee their safety; the underground structures could not develop because there were no key leaders in the country.</div>
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Sending leaders into the country, however, was only part of the solution. Even if leaders had been sent in, the resources for carrying out the armed struggle would still have had to come from outside the country. And how would the leaders have co-ordinated their actions and issued their orders to the soldiers in the field?</div>
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The problem was not so much a political one about who was where and doing what, but a practical one about an almost complete lack of decent communications.</div>
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It is astonishing that so few were able to see this, as communications is the most important weapon in any conflict situation. Without good communications the battle is lost even if your side has an overwhelming advantage in physical and human terms. This has been confirmed in countless wars and struggles throughout history. Good communications means effective conduct of a struggle; bad communications means ineffective conduct or defeat.</div>
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It could even be said that the entire nature of a struggle is determined by the effectiveness of the adversaries' communications. The side that lacks sophistication in this field will not be able to issue commands to its soldiers and they, in turn, will not be able to coordinate their activities as they will not know what their compatriots are doing and where they should concentrate their efforts. In other words, the fighters will not receive their orders and be left to face their enemy without leadership.</div>
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Poor communications had determined the shape of our struggle. It was because our fighters and cadres could not communicate with their leaders and between themselves that the underground never developed and People's War never became a reality.</div>
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It is hard to explain how our leadership failed to grasp the importance of good communications, especially as they were trying to lead a struggle by remote control. Perhaps it was that they were too used to seeing all problems and solutions to problems in political terms that they were unable to see that the problem was to a large extent a technical one. Perhaps they had a fear of technical things, a suspicion of things they did not fully understand.</div>
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When this is put to comrades who were involved in underground work they all confirm that the lack of proper communications was the main hindrance to their work. They felt cut off and their activities could never develop into anything meaningful. The absence of proper communications meant there was a lack of political leadership. This reduced most activities to anarchic actions as they were seldom part of a planned strategy. Many comrades lost faith in the organisation as the lack of contact made them feel that they had been forgotten. Many became so disillusioned that they engaged in actions which often did the cause more harm than good. Others simply gave up because their discipline would not allow them to do their own thing.</div>
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My own experience as an underground operative in the mid-'seventies confirms this. Our little two-man propaganda cell could never develop beyond the mandate given to us simply because we could not communicate properly with our handlers. The use of cumbersome book codes and complicated secret inks made us view communications as a tedious activity that was best avoided. Contact was so infrequent and irregular that most of the time we felt that we were operating in a vacuum. There were instructions but no leadership, acknowledgements but no encouragement.</div>
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There is no doubt that our poor communications contributed to our arrest, as was the case for countless others. We were aware of surveillance but could do nothing, for our communications were too slow to be used as a tool for seeking guidance.</div>
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Seeking new ways</h3>
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After <a data-rapid_p="3" href="http://www.anc.org.za/books/escape0.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">escaping from prison</a> in 1979 I ended up in London and one of my tasks as an ANC activist with underground experience was to train others in the skills and techniques of underground work. As their trainer I became the person responsible for handling their communications. Over the years I trained dozens of people but one thing I soon noticed was that there were always fewer messages than people. It was always the same pattern: comrades would go back home feeling enthusiastic and begin by sending a series of messages. They soon came to realise that it was a futile activity as it took so much effort to say so very little and the responses, as few and far between as they were, contained little encouragement and advice. There were only instructions which usually lacked any connection with the reality they were experiencing.</div>
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A lot of effort went into training these people but it soon became apparent that there was extremely little return on the investment, simply because the communications were so poor.</div>
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I was determined to do something about this so set out to revamp the communications methods being used from London. The first to go were the awful book codes we had always used. In their place I substituted proper numerical ciphers. Next to go were the complicated invisible inks. In their place I substituted ultra-violet, invisible-ink, marker pens and a whole variety of concealment methods including microfilms, secret compartments and audio cassettes.</div>
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All of this made little difference though, as it was the manual encryption that still took the time. A short message of a few hundred characters would take all evening to encipher. I tried various schemes to streamline the process but made little headway because it remained a boring, manual task. There was no help from our leaders for they were not concerned with the methods of secret communications. They were only interested in the clear messages that came out of and went into the communications. How the messages were transferred was none of their business. That was the concern of the comms officers like me.</div>
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It was at this time, the early 'eighties, that personal computers were becoming affordable. In them I saw our salvation. A computer, I read, was eminently suitable for boring, repetitive tasks - and that's what we had on our hands. The purchase of our first computer led to a revolution in our communications that ultimately made possible operations such as Vula.</div>
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Developing an Electronic Communications System for Operation Vula</h3>
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In the early eighties, at the time I was considering the purchase of a computer to assist me with my secret communications work, I met Ronnie Press. He was an old stalwart of the struggle who had left South Africa in the first wave of exiles in the early `sixties.</div>
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Ronnie, with a few others based in the UK, had founded the ANC 'Technical Committee' - a body whose task it was to provide technical assistance for the armed struggle. He had access to computers at the polytechnic where he taught and had also come to the realisation that they would be a powerful aid in communications. The two of us knew very little about programming but set about getting one of his work computers to emulate the manual operations of one of our book codes. While it did what we wanted it did not take us very far as there was no one to communicate with.</div>
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In 1984, when prices were low enough, I lashed out and bought my first personal computer. It was quite a pathetic little machine by today's standards but it gave me the opportunity to learn how to write elementary computer programs. Inspired by this Ronnie bought one too, so at last we could communicate with each other. As these were pretty basic machines there was not much we could do with them apart from swapping cassette tapes that held our secret messages. Nevertheless this was a major advance, for what used to take hours to encrypt now took a matter of minutes.</div>
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One day Ronnie arrived with a pair of modems. I had never heard of such a thing but apparently they would allow our computers to talk to each over the telephone. This was the breakthrough, I thought, for these devices would allow us to communicate with our operatives in South Africa. No longer would communications be a chore - it would now be fun.</div>
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Getting the modems to work properly was a nightmare as neither of us knew anything about the vagaries of digital communications. It made us realise that using computers to communicate with South Africa would not be as easy as we'd first imagined. How would the communicating parties know when the other side had a message to send? Also, would not the mere act of communicating, especially with encrypted messages, endanger the user in South Africa? How too could we get the equipment to our activists at home? In any case, only those with access to electricity and phone sockets - usually white comrades - would be able to use computers for communicating.</div>
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These uncertainties dampened our enthusiasm but we managed to set up a link between London and Bristol, where Ronnie lived, using an electronic mail service. We showed this to our chiefs but failed to impress because everything went wrong on that occasion. They gave our project their blessing, but what we wanted was not moral but financial support.</div>
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On one of his regular trips to Zambia, Ronnie took his computer and modem to see if we could communicate between Lusaka and London. The test failed miserably as the crackle and echo on the line drowned the modems' pathetic signals. The Lusaka chiefs were impressed with the speed and ease with which the computer enciphered and deciphered messages but were quick to realise that it would have no immediate practical application. No one would be able to use it as a computer would be out of place in a township and those who would be in a position to use them would not last long if they communicated with Zambia.</div>
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We continued to improve our communications system but without a concrete application it did not progress very far. Our initial enthusiasm waned as there appeared to be no way of bridging the gap between ourselves and users inside the country.</div>
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Our next project was one that led to the breakthrough we had been waiting for. We had received a request, as members of the Technical Committee, to find a way for activists to contact each other safely in an urban environment. Ronnie had seen a paging device that could be used between users of walkie-talkies. A numeric keypad was attached to the front of each radio set and when a particular number was pressed a light would flash on the remote set that corresponded to the number. The recipient of the paging signal could then respond to the caller using a pre-determined frequency so that the other users would not know about it.</div>
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Since the numbers on the keypad actually generated the same tones as those of a touch-tone telephone it occurred to us that instead of merely having a flashing light at the recipient's end you could have a number appear corresponding to the number pressed on the keypad. If you could have one number appear you could have all numbers appear and in this way send a coded message. If the enemy was monitoring the airwaves all they would hear was a series of tones that would mean nothing.</div>
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Taking this a step further we realised that if you could send the tones by radio then they could also be sent by telephone, especially as the tones were intended for use on telephone systems. Ronnie put together a little microphone device that - when held on the earpiece of the receiving telephone - could display whatever number was pressed at the sending end. Using touch-tone telephones or separate tone pads as used for telephone banking services two people could send each other coded messages over the telephone. This could be done from public telephones, thus ensuring the safety of the users.</div>
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To avoid having to key in the numbers while in a telephone booth the tones could be recorded on a tape recorder at home and then played into the telephone. Similarly, at the receiving end, the tones could be recorded on a tape recorder and then decoded later. Messages could even be sent to an answering machine and picked up from an answering machine if left as the outgoing message.</div>
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We gave a few of these devices, disguised as electronic calculators, to activists to take back to South Africa. They were not immensely successful as the coding still had to be done by hand and that remained the chief factor discouraging people from communicating.</div>
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The next step was an attempt to marry the tone communications system with computer encryption. Ronnie got one of the boffins at the polytechnic to construct a device that produced the telephone tones at very high speed. This was attached to a computer that did the encryption. The computer, through the device, output the encrypted message as a series of tones and these could be saved on a cassette tape recorder that could be taken to a public telephone. This seemed to solve the problem of underground communications as everything could be done from public telephones and the encryption was done by computer.</div>
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While working on this system in early 1987 I was called down to Lusaka to train a group of activists in the use of some specialised radio equipment. While there I was approached by Mac Maharaj, now Minister of Transport. He had heard that we had been experimenting with computers and various methods of secret communications. I demonstrated the use of the tone pad system using radios and we agreed to set up a trial system using the telephone model between London and Lusaka.</div>
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The system worked, but as our computerised version was not ready the coding was still done by hand and this limited the amount of information that could be transferred.</div>
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Later in the year Mac visited me in London and explained that the ANC was planning to send leadership figures into the country but that this could not take place until a suitable communications system was in place.</div>
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This surprised and pleased me for Mac was the first ANC leader I had come across who had the foresight to realise that nothing serious could happen in the underground until people could communicate properly. He was happy with our tone pad system but wanted to use computers to do the encryption as hand coding would be too limiting.</div>
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I promised to investigate but explained the fundamental problem of attempting to communicate secretly with computers: it was too dangerous to use a computer from a listed telephone and simply not possible to take one into a telephone booth. Our computerised tone system could be the answer but we were having major problems getting it to work reliably.</div>
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Ronnie and I had thought about using modems in the same way as our tone device but the problem was that modems worked in pairs. The modem signal could not be recorded on tape because one modem had to be talking directly to another before anything would happen.</div>
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By chance a friend gave me an acoustic coupler that he was about to throw out. This is a special sort of modem that clips onto a telephone handpiece instead of being plugged into a wall socket. I was using this one day when I happened to lose the connection with the remote computer. I noticed that, despite this loss of contact, the message I was sending continued to be sent, unlike what would have happened had I been using a normal modem. Could it be true that these devices did not require another modem at the other end to work?</div>
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To test this hypothesis I wrote a little program to send some computer output to the modem. Sure enough the sounds came out of the modem's speaker. These I recorded and played back into the microphone end of the modem while running a communications program on the computer. Eureka! The characters appeared on the screen. I had done with a modem what we were attempting to do with our tone machine.</div>
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This seemed to be the real breakthrough. I adapted our encryption program to work with the acoustic modem and recorded the output on a tape recorder. This I took to a public telephone booth and played back to my answering machine. Then I played the answering machine 'message' back into the modem and the computer deciphered it successfully. As the plaintext message appeared on the screen I realised that we had finally discovered an absolutely safe method of communicating with the underground using computers.</div>
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The next problem was to adapt our encryption program to work reliably with this system. When two computers are communicating in the normal way through modems they 'talk' to each other and if an error is detected the receiving computer can ask the sending one to resend the message or the part of the message containing the error. But with our system you had a computer talking to a tape recorder - a completely dumb device. We knew well that if an encrypted message got corrupted while being sent, then everything following the point of corruption would be garbage. And over a distance of ten thousand kilometres there were sure to be errors.</div>
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After a lot of serious programming I managed to develop a system that could ride over errors. You could not recover the text where the corruption occurred but all was not lost if errors occurred. The message continued to decipher to the end.</div>
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After fine tuning this system I demonstrated it to Mac. He was so pleased that he adopted it immediately. We tested it from Lusaka and our conclusion was that if it worked from there it would work from anywhere!</div>
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After a few more meetings with Mac I got a clearer picture of the operation being planned. This was no Mickey Mouse affair. The amount of preparation and security involved indicated that for once the comrades were deadly serious. Mac was insistent that nothing could happen until the communications had been sorted out.</div>
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Around this time - early 1987 - I was introduced to Conny Braam, the head of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement. She appeared also to have been informed of the planned operation and was assisting with background preparations. We were brought together to discuss communication methods. She had been investigating some commercial encryption and communications devices. One of these, a pocket-sized 'encryption computer', was particularly impressive. To send a message you simply held the device on the mouthpiece of a phone and played the code to another similar device on another phone. We tested this with an answering machine and it seemed to work fine.</div>
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To be absolutely certain if these devices were going to work from South Africa we needed to send someone in to test them. We also wanted to know everything about the South African phone system: whether there were card phones, the dimensions of phone handpieces, what the local phone plugs looked like, whether there were suitable public phones, and so forth.</div>
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Conny found a suitable playboy type that no one would suspect of being a 'spy'. I briefed him on what we needed to know and told him where to find it. A short while later he was sent in on his mission.</div>
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Our 'spy' did a magnificent job. He photographed public telephones, located nearly every suitable phone in Johannesburg and Durban and brought back a number of 'samples' that he pulled out of sockets and ripped out of phone booths!</div>
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Most exciting of all, he found out that radio telephones had just been introduced in South Africa. These were huge monsters, very unlike the dainty cell phones in use today. The batteries used to power these phones were so heavy that they could only be used in a motor vehicle. However, after negotiating with a dealer he found that it would be possible to mount one of the units in a suitcase. If we could get one of these our underground operators would be able to communicate safely using computers from just about anywhere.</div>
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Tests with the communications equipment showed that Conny's dedicated coding/transmission machine was hopeless. It simply didn't have the power of our unconventional acoustic modem/tape device, which worked a charm.</div>
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After assessing the results of our 'spy's' mission Mac concluded that the radio telephone would be so useful that it was essential to get one. But how to do it? There was no one in the country who could get the phone and it was going to cost around R16,000.</div>
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Fortunately the ubiquitous Conny had managed to find a sympathetic KLM air hostess who was working on the Amsterdam-Johannesburg route. She was willing to do just about anything for us, including smuggling into and out of the country whatever we wanted.</div>
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I went over to Amsterdam to find out if she was willing to go on a special 'shopping trip' for us to get the phone. She was honoured to be asked and pleased that she would be doing things more exciting than pure courier work.</div>
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I had managed to convince the telephone supplier in Johannesburg that I was a British businessman who needed the telephone for my 'business' and that a 'friend' would be passing through Johannesburg to make the purchase for me. My problem, I explained to him, was how to pay the bills as my work required frequent, quick trips to South Africa. The dealer was so keen to make the sale that he worked out a scheme whereby the phone could be registered in his name but could physically be in my possession. All we had to do was 'top up' his bank account every month and everyone would be happy!</div>
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On her first trip the air hostess was unable to get the phone because her plane was late. The second time the salesman didn't show up but finally she got it. For her it was a major victory as she felt she had let us down on the previous occasions.</div>
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Back in London we made the final preparations for the start of Operation Vula, which was due to begin in July or August 1988 when the first operatives were to be smuggled in. Among those in the first group was Mac Maharaj.</div>
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I had two new phone lines installed in my flat: one for incoming calls from South Africa and Lusaka, the other for the South African operatives to pick up messages directed to them. On both I connected specially doctored answering machines that could record and play messages for up to five minutes without cutting off. The system would work more or less the same from Lusaka as from South Africa, except that there was no need to use public phones in Lusaka.</div>
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It was hard to believe that this rickety system would work under real conditions. Only when it was tried by the comrades after they got into the country would we know.</div>
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Vula Starts</h3>
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In the early months of 1988 Mac Maharaj and 'Ghebuza' (Siphiwe Nyanda) were readying themselves to be infiltrated into the country as the first group of Vula operatives. To most people, however, Mac was a very sick man who was suffering from a serious kidney ailment. He hobbled around on a stick and failed to turn up for the string of important meetings that leadership figures were expected to attend. It was said that he was about to go to a sanatorium in the Soviet Union to wait for a kidney transplant. Ghebuza was also withdrawing from his regular activities because he was about to go on a long 'officer training course' in the Soviet Union. No one other than the President, Oliver Tambo, and a few others involved in the preparations for Vula knew the truth. So tight had the security around the preparations been that no one doubted what they were told about Mac and Ghebuza.</div>
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The two had been well prepared with a range of professional disguises and false documents. An extremely contorted route had been worked out for the pair to reach South Africa from Zambia. Indeed they would depart for the Soviet Union where their appearances and identities would be radically altered. They would even leave a 'trail' so that people could confirm that they had been seen in that country. From Moscow they would fly to a few European cities to fuzz the trail, from where they would move on to east Africa and ultimately to Swaziland where they would be assisted to hop the border into South Africa. Everything along the way was well prepared and well rehearsed.</div>
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Back in London the communications equipment stood idle waiting for Vula to start. The first ring of the telephone attached to the 'incoming' answering machine would signal the start of the operation we had all worked and waited for so long.</div>
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Although we had thoroughly tested our equipment it was hard to believe that it was really going to work under the actual conditions for which it had been designed. Yes, messages had been sent successfully from South Africa but only from the 'ideal' conditions of a comfortable hotel room. A public telephone was different. Would not the sounds of the street, the dropping of the coins and other extraneous variables not distort the delicate computer messages and render the system worthless? Real life was different to the laboratory, we well knew.</div>
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As Mac and company would not have the computers on arrival in South Africa - they were due to be smuggled in later - we had set up a voice-mail system linked to a tone pager at the London end for initial communications. This allowed the comrades in South Africa to deposit voice messages in an electronic 'voice bank', and when they did so we in London would get bleeped. We could listen to the message from any phone - though we only used public phones for security - by punching in a special code on the dial buttons. We could also leave messages but there was no way the comrades would know there was one waiting for them except by dialling in periodically to check.</div>
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I started carrying the pager from the beginning of August 1988, for I knew that from around that time the comrades would be in the country. A date in the second week of August had been set for Mac to meet Antoinette, our KLM courier, who was going to hand over the radio telephone she had earlier acquired.</div>
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Suddenly, one day in the first week of August, the pager began to bleep. Could this be the start of Vula, or just a wrong number? Sure enough, the familiar voice of Mac played out of the voice 'mailbox'. He wanted to clarify some final details about the planned meeting with Antoinette, but more than that it was a message to tell us that they were safely in the country. I quickly informed Lusaka of the good news.</div>
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The meeting with Antoinette went successfully and Mac got his telephone. After that there were a string of 'voice bank' messages but very little real information could be transferred with the limited set of codewords that had been established beforehand. It was clear that Mac was getting frustrated by the non-arrival of the communications equipment. As Antoinette was due in Johannesburg again in two weeks we decided to buy another laptop and send it in with her, complete with all the other bits and pieces needed to communicate.</div>
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This was handed over to Mac on her next visit to Johannesburg. I expected Mac to begin communicating immediately but the receiving equipment in the London 'communications centre' remained silent for another week. I grew increasingly sceptical that it would ever be used: 'It's too complicated. Give them a few more weeks and they'll throw the whole lot out and start speaking in whispers over phones again. I know these guys!'</div>
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Then suddenly on the last day of August, as I was sitting hacking away at another program on my computer, the 'receive' phone started ringing. The answering machine played its usual outgoing message and then the yellow 'receive' light came on, followed by the familiar high-pitched tone of a computer message. It was music to my ears. I tried to picture Mac cowering inside the acoustic hood of some grubby public telephone in Durban. I could see him nervously holding the little speaker against the mouthpiece of the phone while looking worriedly over his shoulder. His heart must have been racing like mine. It was hard to believe that the sound I was hearing so clearly was coming from a small tape recorder ten thousand kilometres away.</div>
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I quickly played back the message into my computer and proceeded to decipher it. As the plaintext message appeared on the screen I leapt for joy. There it was - Vula's first message - as clear as daylight. Now we're in business!</div>
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As I was reading the printout the phone rang again. Another message. After that there followed another three. Five messages in the first go and all of them deciphered okay. 'Boy, these guys sure mean business' I thought.</div>
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There were a few corruptions in the messages but the error-handler had coped well. In all cases it was possible to guess the lost words from the context. I joined all Mac's messages into one and sent the file down to Lusaka. 'That's the quickest any serious message has ever reached our leaders' I realised as I was sending it.</div>
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The received messages were typically Mac: not a sign of emotion, just straight down to business. It was clear that he had already been extremely busy. There were details of how he was spending the money that he had taken in and which had been brought by Antoinette, how he had found an untraceable way of registering vehicles (I hope, as the Minister of Transport, he has now forgotten how to do this!), details of the setting up of a propaganda project, a list of publications he wanted from London, proposals for setting up bookstores in Durban and Johannesburg, progress in setting up a reception committee for Nelson Mandela in case he was released from prison, details of meetings with key MDM leaders, and so forth.</div>
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The next day I prepared a response for Mac and placed it on the 'out' answering machine. That same day he picked it up and the next day came a reply. This time the message contained some emotion. Mac was excited at the prospects of being able to communicate with the leadership in such a short time. However, there had been some problems. He had not been able to pick up my message using a public telephone as the sound of the coin-drops had corrupted it too badly. He'd had to use a private phone to retrieve the message - and that wasn't good for security.</div>
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If the comrades had been in Johannesburg this would not have been a problem as they would have used the radio telephone, but as it did not operate in Durban where they were based it was quite serious. As I was pondering how to solve this problem another message arrived from Mac. He had discovered in the city a number of public telephones that used phone cards. Apparently Telkom had implemented a pilot project to test the viability of introducing card-operated public telephones. From then on we never looked back.</div>
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The Link Begins to Pay</h3>
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Within a couple of weeks of the establishment of the computerised communication link with South Africa the value of good communications began to show - much sooner than anyone had expected. For the first time in the history of the underground struggle there was a group of operatives inside South Africa in dynamic contact with the leadership outside. What this meant was that there could be true dialogue between the soldiers and the generals. No longer did you have a situation where blind commands were issued which the soldiers obediently had to carry out. The leaders were now properly informed of the situation inside the country and any suggestions they made could be corrected by those 'in the field'. Mac and Ghebuza could air their ideas with the leadership and the latter in turn could ask for more information before any decisions were taken. In short, there could be true political leadership instead of one-sided military orders.</div>
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The link not only served as a channel for dialogue and information transfer but also for a number of other purposes such as making requests, issuing criticism and arranging meetings.</div>
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Most requests were for money, documents, additional equipment for communications and the like. When the first request for weapons appeared on my screen my eyes stood out on stalks. I had seen the comrades packing some light weaponry when I was in Lusaka in June but now they were asking for an arsenal: AKM automatic rifles, TNT, detonating cord, hand grenades, RPG rocket launchers and rifle silencers, amongst other things. Any ideas that I'd had about Vula being purely a project to get political leadership into the country were quickly dispelled. This was serious stuff.</div>
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When a planned rendezvous in Botswana was botched by the comrades from Lusaka severe criticism flowed back from South Africa. Never again were the same mistakes made.</div>
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Over the years we had heard so often that the main factor holding back our revolution was the logistical problems associated with the long lines of supply. Now suddenly these problems melted away. The comrades could during the week demand a supply of weapons or other equipment and have it 'delivered' by the weekend. Details of meetings could be arranged more or less instantaneously, complete with legends and passwords. If anything went wrong at the last moment both sides could be informed timeously and take the appropriate action.</div>
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The ability to communicate in (almost) real time began to have a profound affect on the nature of the project itself, and the personnel at both ends - and in the middle - had to adapt to a new style of working.</div>
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At first the comrades at home were patient in waiting for responses from a leadership who were not accustomed to responding rapidly to events. This quickly turned to impatience as they became aware that speed of response was an organisational problem and not one that could be blamed on inefficient modes of communication.</div>
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On the part of the leadership in Lusaka the inertia of the old ways was soon swept aside by the enthusiasm of those at home. The number of questions and requests coming down the line made them pull their fingers out. The messages also for the first time gave them a window onto what was going on, making them feel part of something live. This added spirit to their former languid manner of responding to events.</div>
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For our part in London, we at first felt like passive spectators watching the messages shuttle back and forth. Soon we realised that we could play the role of facilitators by prodding Lusaka for responses and reminding them of what they had to do. Printouts and disk files of the traffic provided a convenient record of what was demanded and what needed to happen. We could often short-circuit things by responding on behalf of the other side when we got a better feel of what was happening at both ends.</div>
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After the initial contact had been established between South Africa and Lusaka and a pattern of working had been established, many requests started to get directed at London. The idea that London would simply act as a 'hub' linking the 'spokes' from South Africa and Lusaka soon evaporated. A multitude of requests and instructions flooded in from both sides. Deposit money in this bank account, collect £50,000 from the ANC office and forward it to that destination, buy more computers, prepare and send us these documents...</div>
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The System Expands</h3>
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From the start we were never completely certain how secure our encryption program was. As it employed an 'in-house' algorithm (formula) it had not been subjected to the rigours of testing by experts.</div>
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According to the experts there is only one theoretically unbreakable cipher - the one-time pad. This system is one where the communicating parties each have a pad consisting of pages of random numbers. The numbers on a particular page are added to the numeric values given to the letters of a plaintext message. After the message has been enciphered the pages of the pad that were used are ripped out and destroyed. Provided the numbers are truly random and are never used more than once there is no theoretical way to crack such a cipher. Every possible answer is correct because there is no relation between one (encrypted) character and the next.</div>
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Our system was based on the one-time pad, though instead of having paper pads the random numbers were on a disk. Each time the computer enciphered a message it read the correct number of characters from the disk, used them to perform the encryption and then wiped them from the disk so that they could never be recovered. While this provided the maximum security it had the disadvantage that the numbers got used up fairly rapidly and new 'key' disks had to be sent into the country. Fortunately Antoinette was able to take these in but the traffic in disks was considerable and each one represented another risk. It also had the disadvantage that it was a one-way system. You could not decipher your own messages; only the other side could do that. This meant that there was no way of safely storing old, but needed, information.</div>
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The only way this system could be cracked was if the enemy somehow got hold of the 'key' disks and made copies of them. But after a while it was clear that nothing of the sort was happening. If the enemy was reading the messages then they would surely have acted on the information they contained. There was too much at stake to ignore their content in the interests of not letting on that they were privy to what was going on.</div>
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The comrades called for a system that they could use to secure their own information, one that used regular keys so that the encryption could be reversed. After much serious programming we came up with a system that used a long key typed in from a book. This key was used by the program to generate its own random numbers so that it didn't have to take them from a disk. To ensure that the same 'key' line was never used again we sent them special invisible-ink pens to mark the lines used and ultra-violet torches to see which lines had been marked.</div>
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The amount of traffic increased by the day and in order to streamline operations Mac acquired a message pager. Using a special set of code words we in London could now let him know when there were messages waiting to be collected. It also allowed us to inform him if his message(s) had deciphered successfully or if he had to resend it/them. He could do the same with us using the voice mail system linked to our pager. As all this phoning had to be done from public telephones I decided that it would be a lot easier if I bought a cellphone. This I did using a false identity I had set up for myself. The cellphone turned out to be a most valuable addition to our communications setup. In combination with the 'voice bank' and pagers we could now talk to each other in almost real time without our voices ever coming together. New code words could easily be added through a computer message. Often a question posed in a computer message could instantaneously be answered with this voice mail/pager system.</div>
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The answering machines clicked and whirred all day long with messages to and from Lusaka and South Africa. Mac's messages would often come through in the middle of the night as well. Not only did the frequency of messages increase but also their length. As the phone cards being used by the comrades in South Africa lasted a mere minute and a half, messages often had to be split up into chunks. Sometimes a single message would consist of up to ten parts.</div>
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The demands on the system increased rapidly over the months forcing us to extend it to Conny Braam in Holland, to some comrades in Yorkshire who were assisting with documentation and to Canada where a Vula operative was involved in recruiting activists to be sent in to assist Vula. There was no need to use the complicated acoustic modem/tape recorder system with these 'nodes' as the security demands were not of the same nature. Ordinary e-mail links were set up using commercial providers. The same encryption program was used, however, to maintain the same level of security as with South Africa and Zambia.</div>
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Inside South Africa Mac spent much of his time travelling between Durban and Johannesburg to attend meetings and set up structures. When he was 'out-of-town' Ghebuza would take over the communications. Often Mac's trips to Johannesburg were timed to coincide with Antoinette's flights to South Africa. And each time she flew to South Africa I had to go to Holland twice: once to take things for her to take to South Africa and once to pick up whatever she brought back. On the out trips she would usually take great wads of £50 notes, new 'key' disks, upgrades of the encryption programs, disks containing (encrypted) documents and longer analytical messages from Lusaka, micro-photographs or heavily concealed copies of ANC and SACP publications, new tape recorders and so on. On the return trips should would usually bring back disks of encrypted messages giving fuller details of the ongoing projects and the political situation in general.</div>
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Whenever I was out of the country Ronnie Press would take over control. He was by this stage also living in London and had in his flat an identical set of equipment. All that had to be done to switch the traffic to him was to inform the comrades at both ends to use his numbers instead of mine. Between our two flats we set up a number of links and backup systems using commercial e-mail, our own private bulletin board system and even a radio link that could transfer the messages using radio modems. We could also use the answering machine/acoustic modem system as a last resort.</div>
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At the Lusaka end one of Conny's soldiers, Lucia, was put in charge of communications. From that point on the efficiency of that station increased markedly. A matchbox house in one of Lusaka's squalid townships was rigged out to serve as the comms centre, a place no one would have suspected of serving such a purpose.</div>
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By early 1989 Vula was ready for big things, and it was clear that what had been achieved in such a short time could not have been done without the ability of all concerned to talk to each other so easily and so securely.</div>
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Vula enters 1989</h3>
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As Vula entered 1989 the secret communications network connecting South Africa to Lusaka via London was buzzing with activity. Considering the unconventional nature of the link it is surprising that it worked as well as it did. The comrades in South Africa and Lusaka took it for granted, but none of us realised how dependent the entire operation had become upon it.</div>
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In the middle of January we met our first hitch. Mac Marahaj's 'key' disk got corrupted and so he could no longer encrypt - which meant he could no longer communicate by computer. Fortunately there was a separate backup system, a second set of program and 'key' disks kept for such an eventuality. However, it made us realise how fragile the system was. If the second set of disks somehow also got corrupted - or damaged or lost or stolen - the whole operation would be in jeopardy. The communication link had become so crucial to the functioning of Operation Vula that losing it was like cutting the umbilical cord to a foetus. Something had to be done, and quickly.</div>
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Fortunately I had been working on an encryption system that operated in a more conventional way with keywords that could be entered by hand. It was obvious that this capability had to be built into the communications encryption program in case a 'key' disk got corrupted again.</div>
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Some months earlier the comrades had asked us to develop an encryption system that would allow them to encipher and decipher their own files for safekeeping. The special encryption program used for the communications could not be used for this purpose because it was a one-way system: you couldn't decipher your own messages because you never knew the key. The encryption program grabbed the key data it needed from the 'key' disk, did its work and then destroyed the data.</div>
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The new 'diskless' system allowed the comrades to decipher their own messages and had been sent to them a while earlier, but I had warned them not to use it for communications as we were uncertain of its strength.</div>
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So, off to the bookshops and libraries I went to find out about secure encryption algorithms. Nothing impressed me very much and all I discovered was that cryptology was an arcane science for bored mathematicians, not for underground activists. However I learned a few tricks and used these to develop a system to meet our security needs.</div>
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In normal conditions a single key is used for a lot of messages. We wanted to avoid this because we knew that if one of the comrades got captured by the enemy and was made to divulge the key, all intercepted messages could then be deciphered. By using a different key each time, security would be greater and it would be much more difficult for the enemy to find out what keys had been used.</div>
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This presented another problem. If we were going to use a different key each time how would we get these keys to the other side. The solution was to go back to our old book code system. Send the comrades a book and get them to use a different section of text each time as the key.</div>
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The books would be changed frequently and then destroyed so that no record of the keys were kept. The position of the key - page and line - would be encrypted with the message and would re-appear when the other side proceeded to decipher it.</div>
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In February Antoinette, our airline courier, took the disks containing the new program in to Mac and shortly afterwards the comrades started to use it. The new program defaulted to the 'key' disk version but could switch to the hand key version in an emergency. This innovation saved the communications several times when 'key' disks got erased by mistake, got forgotten in some other place or got corrupted.</div>
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All the way to Mandela's cell</h3>
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In April Mac sent details of how it might be possible to set up a link with Nelson Mandela, who was at this time being held in a house in the grounds of the Victor Verster Prison near Paarl.</div>
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During this period Mandela was meeting various government bigwigs to discuss his possible release and various scenarios for the future. He was also meeting leaders of the Mass Democratic Movement. Such meetings were closely monitored by the enemy, so it was never possible to get to Lusaka the precise details of what was being discussed. Mandela realised the fragility of the situation and was reluctant to engage in any activities that could be interpreted as underhand. Mac, however, was convinced that if Mandela could be shown that a truly safe and absolutely confidential line to Oliver Tambo in Lusaka was available, and was operated by Mac he could be persuaded to use it.</div>
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Such a link could be set up by one of Mandela's lawyers, who was allowed to meet him at regular periods to discuss particular issues. Mac had over a period of months debriefed the lawyer intensively in order to determine the exact circumstances under which the meetings took place. Mac had worked in the communications team on Robben Island so he knew how Mandela would respond and what would be required to persuade him to participate in the scheme.</div>
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The first step was to receive authority from Lusaka for the lawyer to disclose Mac's presence to Mandela. Once this was granted, the lawyer would demonstrate to Mandela the method of camouflaging the memos. The method was based on one that we had used extensively during the previous months - books with secret compartments in their covers.</div>
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Conny Braam had brought into her team a professional bookbinder who had devised a method of creating re-useable compartments in the covers of books.</div>
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These proved to be extremely effective and absolutely undetectable. At first the bookbinder made these books for us in Amsterdam but because the demand for them was so great I had a few lessons from her and took back to London the skills and implements needed to create them on our own.</div>
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Mac realised that if the lawyer could take one of these books to Mandela each time, with a note concealed inside the cover, Mandela could read the note and respond by concealing details of his meetings with the government in the same compartment.</div>
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At first Mandela was reluctant to participate but when he began to grasp how it would work he changed his mind. The decision must have been difficult for someone cut off from modern technological developments for so long.</div>
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Suddenly one day a message from Mandela appeared on my screen. I stared at it for a long time. It was not the content that excited me but the very fact that here, for the first time ever, was an electronic message from the mythical man who had inspired us all so much. A real live message from Mandela here on my computer screen. Vula's ultimate coup!</div>
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After that messages from Mandela became a regular feature and in response there were long memos from Oliver Tambo in Lusaka. The two were now talking in confidence for the first time since the early 'sixties. I couldn't help chuckling to myself each time one of these messages went past when I thought how the regime's chiefs must be thinking they were entirely in control of the situation. They wanted to create the impression that they were talking to Mandela alone and that his responses were his personal opinions. Little did they know that they were talking to the ANC collective.</div>
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The system under stress</h3>
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As the months passed it became clear that the communications work was taking up too much time for Mac and Ghebuza (Siphiwe Nyanda). The basic preparatory work of Vula had been completed and now the comrades were busy setting up structures around the country. Often they were away from base for days at a time but the need to move information was increasing all the time. This meant that they had less and less time to go to public telephones to do the sending and receiving.</div>
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After a while we started to notice that things were being done slightly differently. Messages arrived at different times and at different frequencies. Then different voices began to come out of the voice mailboxes. It was apparent that the comrades had trained a couple of people to handle the communications. This was later confirmed in a message.</div>
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After these new comrades took over, the number of messages increased even further. Huge batches of messages would regularly be dumped on our answering machines and we were often kept up till late at night changing tapes on the 'pick up' machine. It was not long before it became clear that our system was reaching the limits of its capacity.</div>
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As an interim measure I modified the London setup such that when there was a great batch of messages to send, they could be sent directly from the computer instead of from the answering machine. When the 'pickup' phone rang, the computer would automatically squirt the messages down the line. By cutting out the answering machine the quality of the signal was improved. A special amplifier in the circuit ensured that the signal was really loud and crisp.</div>
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All the while we knew that we would ultimately have to move over to a regular electronic mail service as our existing system had definite limitations. But this brought us back to the original problem: it was too dangerous to communicate from a known telephone line. Our whole quirky system had been designed to get around this inescapable fact. But what if the person who used the phone was someone who would normally communicate by computer and had no known affiliation with any political organisation? Surely this would not attract attention. Even using encryption should not raise eyebrows for businesses used it all the time to protect their information and it was built into ordinary programs such as word processors. In any case, did the enemy have the capacity to determine which of the thousands of messages leaving the country every day was a 'suspicious' one?</div>
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The only way to test out this hypothesis was to try it, and that's what we did.</div>
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During the preceding months I had been training an 'agent' whom the ANC was going to send back to South Africa in order to penetrate critical computer networks. The 'agent' was a South African who had been living abroad for many years and had worked as a computer programmer for major British electronics companies. He was also 'clean', having never been involved in exile politics.</div>
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In order to report on his activities he would need to be able to communicate abroad in much the same way as Vula. But because he would not be 'underground' in the same sense as the Vula operatives we decided to use an open, commercial electronic-mail service rather than our 'in-house' Vula system. This would serve both as an efficient, secret communications channel for his own work and as a test for Vula.</div>
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Later in the year the agent was sent in. He had already secured a position that was an excellent launching pad for his 'career'.</div>
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Immediately on arrival in South Africa he started communicating. This was a most normal thing for a person in his position to do. His training revealed no surveillance so we quickly realised that this was the way forward for Vula - find someone who would normally use a computer for communicating abroad and get that person to handle the communications. This would remove the constraints of the current system and allow the channel to be opened up for much greater things.</div>
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Mac comes out for a rest</h3>
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After returning from one of her regular trips to Johannesburg, Antoinette reported that Mac had seemed very stressed and looked tired and overworked. This impression had been conveyed through the messages too but it was never possible to tell with Mac. He always appeared to have boundless energy and kept us all on our toes with his demands. His messages often came through in the middle of the night giving the impression that he never even stopped to sleep.</div>
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But after a while it became clear that the stress of the situation was beginning to take its toll and the Lusaka leadership suggested that Mac should come out for a rest. On top of this the word was getting around that he had been seen in South Africa and was not in the Soviet Union waiting for a kidney transplant, as everybody had been told. It was essential for the continuation of Vula that this legend be shored up.</div>
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Through the messages it was arranged that Mac would come out in early July and make his way back to the Soviet Union. There he would 'emerge' in full public view and announce that he was indeed still waiting for his kidney transplant, but that interim treatment had been effective enough to allow him to visit his family for a short while.</div>
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In London we booked a ticket for Mac to fly to India via Mauritius. Using yet another disguise and false identity Mac was able to make his way to New Delhi and then on to Moscow. All the time we were in contact with him through voice mail.</div>
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After a couple of weeks in Moscow Mac returned to London where we were able to discuss the question of communications. As we had suspected our quaint tape recorder system was beginning to creak and groan under the load. A new system had to be found that would allow much greater amounts of information to flow. More than that, the scope of Vula had changed and with it the scope of the network had to change. While the external links were still crucial, there was now a need to connect all the outposts of Vula that had been established throughout the country.</div>
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We explained to Mac how the system used by our 'secret agent' worked. If Vula could move over to a similar system, Mac suggested, it would not only allow more information to flow but it would also serve as a coordinating tool. It would link everyone internally and eliminate the need to travel around the country all the time. Also, because it was an error-free system, external machineries could produce fully-formatted propaganda material and send it in. Mac was convinced that they could find suitable people to do the comms. So many people and structures had been linked to Vula that it was now necessary to look at secret communications in an entirely different way.</div>
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Vula Moves into Top Gear</h3>
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Mac's respite abroad gave him the opportunity to recover from the stress of the previous year's work. The washed-out look with which he had arrived was explained as the effects of waiting for a kidney transplant in a Soviet sanatorium. The Mac who went back to South Africa a few weeks later looked much healthier, though he had to pretend that appearances were deceptive. A new kidney was expected any time now and that was why he had to scurry back to the Soviet Union.</div>
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During his time in London we discussed with Mac the future communication needs of Vula. It was clear that the existing system using acoustic modems and tape recorders had more or less reached its limits. Its life had been extended by employing other comrades to handle the communications and by modifications at the London end, but it nonetheless had severe drawbacks that could not be overcome by any improvements to the system. Chief among these were the inability to send formatted documents and the length limitations imposed by using public telephones.</div>
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The current system could only send plain text documents because it was not error-free, and files had to be broken up into small parcels for transmission. The adoption of a system that could transmit error-free with no time and, hence, length limitations would greatly improve its usefulness. This would permit fully-formatted documents - such as laid out publications - to be prepared outside and sent into the country for immediate publication. Vula also needed the ability to communicate internally and this was just not possible with the current system.</div>
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We discussed the various options and Mac agreed that we should work towards implementing a scheme such as the one being used with our 'secret agent' sent in a few months earlier. This involved using a regular electronic-mail service. Since it was being operated by a person with no history of political activism it drew no attention from the authorities. Although Vula had no one in that position, Mac was going to do his utmost to find someone.</div>
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In the meantime the 'old' system would continue and we were to continue investigating all alternatives. The dangers had not lessened even though the political situation was in a state of flux and it was clear that the apartheid regime was going to have to release ANC leaders from prison, including Nelson Mandela. This signalled that they were contemplating a major shift in policy as they could not have Nelson Mandela freely moving around the place preaching the gospel of a banned organisation.</div>
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Protecting Vula</h3>
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Ronnie and I had long been investigating various communications options. Every day new products were coming on the market and we had to be ever watchful of new developments in the computer and communications fields. We attended countless exhibitions and subscribed to a range of magazines and journals. There was no shortage of funds so we were able to invest considerable amounts in 'research and development'.</div>
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As it was difficult to pursue our technical investigations and speak to businessmen in the name of the ANC we decided to set up false identities for ourselves and pose as businessmen. To become businessmen we needed a business, so we set up one. By speaking to some sympathetic businessmen and lawyers we were able to establish a 'front company' through an outfit that provided businesses 'off-the-shelf'. I</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-32332565780192419392015-03-31T07:21:00.001-07:002015-03-31T07:21:27.106-07:00Commemorating Curiel's assassination / Al-Ahram 1998<br />
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<img alt="Al-Ahram Weekly On-line" src="http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/standard/aaw.gif" /></h1>
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<span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;">Al-Ahram Weekly On-line </span><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;">1 9 - 25 November 1998 </span><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;">Issue No.404</span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: 2em; font-weight: 700;">Commemorating Curiel's assassination</span></div>
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<span class="ygrps-yiv-1006346211byauthor" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427808934078_8824"><b id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427808934078_8823">By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed</b></span></div>
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Last week, I attended a seminar held under the auspices of the Sorbonne and Paris-8 University to mark the 20th anniversary of Henri Curiel's assassination. The most famous founding father of Egyptian communism in the forties, Curiel created the Egyptian Movement of National Liberation (Hameto) in 1942, and became the first General-Secretary of the Democratic Movement of National Liberation (Hadeto) in 1947. He was expelled from Egypt shortly before the 1952 Revolution and, though he never returned, remained deeply involved in Egypt's problems, its internal political life as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict, for the rest of his life.<div id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427808934078_8739" style="display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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With the help of a group of communists of Jewish origin who left Egypt for France at approximately the same time he did, Curiel was active in a number of Third World causes, notably his strong support for the Ben Bella regime in Algeria (even donating the family mansion in Zamalek, which serves as the Algerian Embassy in Egypt), and his championship of many national liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which, in practical terms, often took the form of logistical assistance. He remained committed to these causes until his assassination by unknown assailants in 1978 on the doorstep of his home in Paris. Although his murder became something of a cause célèbre, the French police have to this day failed to solve the case.</div>
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As a militant in the Egyptian communist movement, I was never part of the Curiel group. In fact, I only met him once, and then under somewhat bizarre circumstances. Shortly before the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, a rebellion broke out in Hadeto under the leadership of the late Shohdi Attiya El-Shaf'i and Anwar Abdel-Malek, the now internationally renowned scholar, who accused the movement's Jewish leaders of distorting its identity at a time the country stood on the brink of war with the Zionists in Palestine. The two men created a counter-pole to the leadership which they called the Revolutionary Faction and which attracted the bulk of Hadeto's student and youth membership body. To consolidate the Faction's position, Shohdi decided to issue a lengthy manifesto which, for obvious reasons, had to be printed in secret. The site chosen was an empty apartment in the Immobilia building belonging to an ambassador on post abroad who happened to be the father of one of the Faction's student recruits. Somehow the news was leaked to the Hadeto leadership, who decided to raid the apartment and confiscate the document. I was among the Faction members in the apartment when the military section of Hadeto, led by Curiel himself, carried out the raid.</div>
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We tried to burn the document before it was seized but the flames got out of hand and smoke began to appear at the windows. People gathered in the street and the fire brigade was called. We finally managed to put out the fire, call off the fire brigade and disperse the crowds without anybody realising what was really at stake. The poor ambassador's apartment was in shambles, but Curiel could congratulate himself on a mission accomplished. As we left, Curiel singled me out to ride with him in his car. We had a rather heated discussion which I cannot recall in any detail. What I do remember is that he struck me as being closer to my idea of a Jesuit priest than a communist activist.</div>
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Paris is obviously not the proper place to resolve old quarrels within the ranks of the Egyptian communist movement, if only because all the parties involved cannot be made available concomitantly in a foreign capital. But Paris is certainly a convenient place to initiate new forms of common action with the Curiel group on the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is not to say that the conflict can be totally dissociated from the history of the Egyptian communist movement.</div>
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Indeed, I have my own theory on the relationship between the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the one hand, and the course followed by the Egyptian communist movement, on the other. The theory, which has been challenged by many in the Egyptian Left, is that much of what Egyptian Marxists attributed to communism was in fact motivated by other considerations of which they were largely unaware. There was first what I call a "Jewish moment" in the communist movement, a period when the course of events in the movement was determined to a great extent by the identity problems of the then existing leadership. This lasted until the creation of Israel, which ushered in a second moment, seemingly in reaction to the first, where the movement acquired pan-Arab traits. Ultimately, the Egyptian communists dissolved their organisations and joined ranks with Nasser, overcoming years of misunderstandings with his regime, including long prison terms and torture that claimed among its victims Shohdi Attiya El-Shaf'i, who had been the first to rebel against the Jewish leadership.</div>
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For the Egyptian communists, the pan-Arab dimension took precedence over the internationalist dimension of communism, demonstrating that not because a given conflict acquires priority status at the global level it automatically acquires the same privileged status at regional levels. Although the main contradiction at the global level was between communism and capitalism, at the regional level it was between Zionism and pan-Arabism. That is why the confrontation between the two ideologies was not overcome despite the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the end of communism as a world pole and the unfolding of a peace process in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is inadmissible, in such a context, that conflicts inherited from the forties in the Egyptian communist movement should still stand as a barrier in the way of a common effort to isolate the forces that are most hostile to an equitable and peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, first and foremost Israel's super-hawks with considerable representation in its present Likud government.</div>
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For these reasons, I decided to take part in the Curiel seminar. The group around him have an established status in Europe and can be instrumental in promoting initiatives that would further engage European NGOs and other European activists in Middle East problems. Actually, it is wrong to describe the Arab-Israeli conflict as a Middle Eastern conflict, because this ignores the fact that the Jewish problem which initially triggered the process first arose in Europe, with the pogroms in East Europe and the Holocaust under Hitler. Europe cannot absolve itself by its financial compensations to Israel nor by its staunch backing of Israel's existence. Europe will remain responsible for the tragedies it has provoked as long as the conflict is not resolved equitably.</div>
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There was a time when I believed Europe could play a key role in the search for an equitable solution to the conflict by first acknowledging that the Palestinians are as much victims of persecution today as the Jews were in the past. But I came to realise that putting the persecution of Jews and that of Palestinians on an equal footing could be counter-productive, in that it could be seen as implicitly denying the exceptional character of the Holocaust and give rise to accusations of negationism by many Europeans. Accordingly, I reformulated my proposal in line with the example offered by Israel's "new historians".</div>
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I proceeded from the premise that a prerequisite for definitive peace is to treat the opponent as a subject, not an object, of history. Negotiations between states tend to treat the other party as an object. Even cheating is legitimate in state negotiations. This does not apply to a debate at the NGO and, more generally, the intelligentsia, level. In order for criticism of the Other to be credible, protagonists must be ready to exercise self-criticism. This is the methodology followed by Israel's "new historians", for whom all the previous Israeli historiography has presented a mythical Israel, good only for propaganda purposes. Some of these historians, though believers in Zionism, have gone as far as to question Israel's legitimacy as a state, in terms of a thorough analysis of the concrete unfolding of historical events. The Curiel group is well placed to develop debates of this nature. At the final session of the seminar, my proposal to encourage a process that would generalise what Israel's "new historians" have initiated was endorsed.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-81899932972149582592015-03-31T07:10:00.002-07:002015-03-31T07:10:40.974-07:00Villa Curiel, Cairo<div>
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Samir Raafat<br />Cairo Times, 12 October, 2000</div>
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Of the 20 villas that stood on Zamalek's Hassan Sabry Street during WW2 only seven remain. No. 14 Brazil Street, today the Algerian Embassy in one of the survivors but what makes this mansion unique is that it is possibly the only Embassy building in Cairo that was allegedly donated to a state-in-the-making.</div>
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For that story we must go back in time when that part of the street was still known as Gabalaya and the villa in question listed as No. 42. Its owner was Daniel Nessim Curiel, the blind son of a usurer who made his fortune bankrolling peasants and small landowners during the latter part of the 19th century.</div>
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Second generation usurers such as Daniel were ennobled bankers even though their basic occupation consisted of cambio and money lending. Likewise, their clients used them to bridge finance their crops knowing they would never be aloud through the doors of the National Bank of Egypt or any other upright bank.</div>
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Having lived part of his adult life in the up-market island of Gezira, Daniel Curiel planned his new house meticulously. He would build it on that large empty tract of land across the street. It would be spacious so as to satisfy the needs of his wife Zefira and their two sons Raoul and Henri--a daughter had died in early childhood. The new house would be tall enough so that anyone wanting to admire the Nile could do so from the second floor. No question about the decorator; Jansen had been and still was the raging interior designer of the day. And if the villa's 17 rooms did not include servants' quarters--10 of them in the service of the Curiels, they would make do with the villa's basement.</div>
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Daniel Curiel also made plans for two exceptional rooms especially set aside for his personal relaxation. One room for his significant numismatic and medal collection estimated at thousands of pounds, and the second for respite at the piano. Two hobbies one seldom attributes to the sightless.</div>
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Cairo at the time did not want for first-rate architects so it was only a matter of price. And cost is precisely what delayed the project. This was 1929 and debt collectors across Egypt were in a fix. The New York financial crash had globalized which is why the Curiels remained a few more years in their old family house at No. 69 Gabalaya Street. Meanwhile the hackneyed employees in Curiel's grubby money-lending agency at No. 6 Chawarby Street in downtown Cairo would have to work overtime to recoup the losses.</div>
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It was only when the country's finances were in good shape in the mid-1930s that Villa Curiel went from blueprint to implementation. And if one believed the wags, Jansen's services had been discarded altogether. Yet judging from the Villa's exterior another stately residence had been added to Zamalek's already burgeoning repertoire. And even if the music room had to be shared with Zefira, herself a first rate pianist, everything else was roughly as Daniel Curiel had predicted. Well, almost.</div>
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Just like it had come about in other Zamalek stately homes, the children of the rich and famous were not as predictable as one imagined. There were those ready to rebel against their sagacious, avaricious and sometimes, bigoted parents.</div>
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Even amid the good living in Gezira, Cairo's best schools, the served meals with three servants in attendance, and the habitual summers in Europe, some youngsters like the French educated Raoul and Henri Curiel found time to flirt with Marxism. But in Henri's case things were very serious for he went as far as declaring himself an Egyptian communist.</div>
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But in this case the word 'Egyptian' is redundant since the Sephardic Curiels preferred Italian citizenship, a fact that did not prevent Daniel from opening his garden each Sunday to British officers and officials throughout WW2.</div>
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Singing <i>La Marseillaise</i> at school may have had something to do with the young Curiels' decision to end up in France rather than Italy. Raoul was first to go much to the distress of his father. A chagrin that paled however next to that brought on by Henri. It was shame and scandal when the family homestead was searched for concealed manifestos printed by Henri's bookshop Le RondPoint. Moreover, the unrepentant millionaire-communist preached <i>l'Internationale</i> all over Cairo's outlawed communist cells. Prime Minister Ismail Sidky who lived across the street and his tarboushed successors, had had enough with the founder of the Egyptian National Liberation Movement (MELN)</div>
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The fallout on Daniel Curiel's money-lending business was hurting.</div>
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<img align="right" alt="Henri Curiel" border="1" height="225" hspace="4" src="http://www.egy.com/P/articles-2/00-10-12.1.jpg" style="border: 0px;" vspace="4" width="88" />When Daniel Curiel died a broken man in November 1948 Henri was beginning a two-year tour of Egypt's prisons: Abbassia, Huckstep, Foreigner's Penitentiary and Oyoun Moussa in Sinai. Zafira finding the house Street overbearingly empty moved into a pension and leased Villa Curiel to Omar Chirine Bey and later to the Afghan Embassy.</div>
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Henri Curiel was almost simultaneously released and expulsed from Egypt in 1950. He never returned to the family homestead on Hassan Sabry (now, Brazil) Street.</div>
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Here the stories about Villa Curiel's fate clash. One version says Henri Curiel donated his Zamalek mansion to President Ben Bella as the first Algerian embassy in Cairo. It is to be noted that the two men had become revolutionary comrades Henri providing the FLN (National Front) with tactical support and logistics.</div>
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But according to Algerian statesmen Lakhdar al-Ibrahimi it was President Gamal Abdel Nasser, not Curiel who offered the house to his government.</div>
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However the fact that Henri Curiel, 64, was gunned down by unknown assailants at the entrance of his Paris home in 1978, and that Nasser died eight years earlier, leaves Villa Curiel's bequeath open to speculation.</div>
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-35222029913670847492015-03-29T10:25:00.002-07:002015-03-29T10:25:48.069-07:00Eqbal Ahmad CONFRONTING EMPIRE (Interview David Barsamian)<br />
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<i style="color: black; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, 'Bitstream Vera Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.3em;">As a co-founder Eqbal Ahmad not only stood at the cradle of the Transnational Institute (TNI), he also raised and nurtured the Institute during its early years.</i></div>
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<i>Early 1973, he was commissioned on a five week trip throughout Europe during which he discussed the idea for the Institute with over 200 individuals representing a wide political and intellectual spectrum. He arrived in an empty building as TNI's first Director, but succeeded in turning it into a center bursting of activity. He awarded Fellowships to individuals from all around the world to do their research and jointly developing a common framework. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for an international network of scholar-activists committed to social change, which still typifies TNI to this very day. He initiated the organisation of TNI's first major conference in 1974, on Chile after the overthrown of the Allende government. He established close working relationships with a wide range of progressive organisations, for instance with Country Information Services (CIS), the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). In 1975, he stepped down as Director to dedicate his time to his own work, but remained involved in TNI, as a Fellow, later as an Advisor and regular visitor. </i></div>
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<i>The TNI also co-sponsored and participated in partnership with the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement, the Rhodesia Sanctions Seminar in Amsterdam, 1974</i></div>
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excerpts from the book</h4>
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Eqbal Ahmad</h1>
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Confronting Empire</h2>
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Interviews with David Barsamian</h3>
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South End Press, 2000</h4>
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pxxxi<br />The Israeli government is now planning roads, major highways and communication networks which link the settlements to the Israeli cities and ports and leave the Palestinian communities out. So we have these autonomous zones which are to be administered by the Palestinian Authority, over which this Authority has no sovereignty. It can't control the land. It can't protect the water. It can't even set up industries without Israel's permission. So we have a series of bantustans called Autonomous Palestinian Authority. Israel is absolving itself of responsibility for the occupied population while keeping the occupation.</h4>
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It's a brilliant scheme, and it is so far succeeding ... What we are witnessing is the institutionalization of a system of exclusion, a fully contracted apartheid: separate municipalities, separate schools, separate health systems, a native economy and an indigenous substratum on the margins of the Israeli state beneath the privileged settler society.</h4>
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This is a bad dream, a racialist utopia being constructed, ironically, by one of the most enlightened and historically humane people, and this with the agreement of a secular native leadership. If the trend holds, during the next decade, Israel-Palestine shall look very much like what has just past, South Africa of the apartheid era.</h4>
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pxxxii<br />The twentieth has been a century most remarkable for its simultaneous capacity to promise hope and deliver disappointments. And as the end approaches, it seems to me that the century's ending in the same way in which it began: renewed hopes of a just and peaceable world order are being overwhelmed by politicians and warriors whose political minds remain rooted in the past.</h4>
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For 300 years before the twentieth century dawned, the world had been transforming, a transformation brought about by modern science, technology, and imperialism. It was through this age of capitalist and European expansion that a world system came to be dominated by the West and the international market came to be controlled entirely for the West's benefit. This sounds rather benign, as though the free market was really free and worked merely to the advantage of the fittest. Far from it; Western domination was achieved by force so widespread, institutionalized, and legitimized by religion and morality that to date the epistemology of this universal violence still shapes relations between the Western and non-Western worlds</h4>
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p27<br />... the truth has to be repeated. It doesn't become stale just because it has been told once. So keep repeating it. Don't bother about who has listened, who not listened... the media and the other institutions of power are so powerful that telling the truth once is not enough. You've got to keep repeating different facts, prove the same point.</h4>
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p29<br />Israel's fundamental contradiction was that it was founded as a symbol of the suffering of humanity ... at the expense of another people who were innocent of guilt.</h4>
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p30<br />The primary task of revolutionary struggle is to achieve the moral isolation of the adversary in its own eyes, and in the eyes of the world...</h4>
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p31<br />Obviously you couldn't morally isolate the regimes of Hitler or Stalin. A strategy of moral isolation assumes that the adversary has based its own legitimacy on moral grounds. Gandhi understood this rather well with regard to British colonialism. He understood the contradiction of British colonialism, which justified itself on liberal principles and was violating them.</h4>
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p32<br />Centrist Zionism's primary contradiction was its principles of Iegitimacy were moral and its practices were immoral.</h4>
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p32<br />The PLO leadership has committed itself to peace with Israel. The terms of peace have been spelled out in the Oslo agreement. This agreement is extremely unjust, because it doesn't respond to any of the fundamental issues in this conflict. It offers no compensation, no restitution, no return to the half of Palestine's population who are now refugees. It offers no settlement of the issue of water rights in the occupied territories. It offers Palestinians no right to self-determination. It offers Palestinians no protection from expanding Israeli settlements. It offers Palestinians no solution or Arabs generally of the problem of Jerusalem, which is as holy to Muslims and Christians as it is to Jews. So in a very genuine sense, Oslo leaves open all the fundamental questions that have defined the Arab-Israeli conflict.</h4>
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p37<br />At the moment, there are four or five people who are foreign affairs columnists of the New York Times, the newspaper of record. Two of them, A.M. Rosenthal and William Safire, are right-wing Zionist supporters of the Likud Party. The third is Thomas Friedman, a centrist Zionist supporter of the Israeli Labor Party. A fourth, Anthony Lewis, is a liberal and a putative Zionist. Of all the foreign affairs columnists of the New York Times, there is not one that would take an independent position on the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict, much less ... one that would comprehend the aspirations, the needs, the feelings of the Arab or Palestinian people. The same pattern is repeated in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other major papers.</h4>
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p41</h4>
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THE DEMONIZATION OF ISLAM</h4>
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Where do you trace chronologically when Islam, Muslims, Arabs become targeted as a threat or an enemy of the West?</h4>
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This is not a completely new phenomenon.... In the tenth century, for the first time you saw a certain notion of demonizing Islam. At that point, it wasn't so misplaced from the European point of view, because Islam was an expansionist civilization, and therefore considered ... a threat and a menace. The Crusades witnessed the first instance of demonization along religious lines, that is, demonization of Islam itself rather than of Arabs or Turks.... Next you notice it in the period when British and later French colonialists encountered Muslim resistance.</h4>
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There was the case of the Mahdi, who besieged and killed General Charles George Gordon in 1885 in Khartoum. That particular moment saw a great deal of emphasis on Islamic fanaticism. Colonial battles were never remembered unless a Custer was killed or a Gordon besieged. Millions of people may die, but the memories are of Custer and Gordon.</h4>
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This is the third time ... in the last 1,400 years that there is this organized attempt to demonize Islam. This time it's more organized and sustained, because the means have changed. Today there is mass communication.</h4>
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Does this process of demonization come from a shared consensus that is not articulated ? Or are people meeting at Harvard and saying, "OK, we have to get together and demonize Arabs and Muslims?"</h4>
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I don't think there is a conspiracy.... Great imperial powers, especially democratic ones, cannot justify themselves on the basis of power or greed alone. No one will buy it.... Modern imperialism needed a legitimizing instrument to socialize people into its ethos. To do that it needed two things: a ghost and a mission. The British carried the white man's burden. That was the mission. The French carried la mission civilisatrice, the civilizing mission. The Americans had manifest destiny and then the mission of standing watch on the walls of world freedom, in John F. Kennedy's ringing phrase. Each of them had the black, the yellow, and finally the red peril to fight against. There was a ghost and there was a mission. People bought it.</h4>
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After the Cold War, Western power was deprived both of the mission and the ghost. So the mission has appeared as human rights. It's a very strange mission for a country which for nearly a hundred years has been supporting dictatorships in Latin America and throughout the world. Chomsky and Herman wrote about this in The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism.</h4>
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In search of menace, they have turned to Islam. It's the easiest, because it has a history.</h4>
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It's also the most vulnerable.</h4>
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It's vulnerable. It's weak.... Islamic countries are home to the oil resources of the West. The West has encountered resistance in Algeria, Egypt, among the Palestinians, and with the Iranian revolution-enough to arouse anxiety that Western interests ... are threatened. And there is a history of demonization. All these things fall into place. And there are enough vested interests to take advantage of it.</h4>
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Media coverage of Islamic fundamentalism seems to be very selective. There are certain types that are not discussed at all. For example, the Saudi version, which may be among the most extreme. Americans hear a lot about Hezbollah and Hamas and groups in Egypt, like the Akhwan.</h4>
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This is a very interesting matter you are raising.... Saudi Arabia's Islamic government has been by far the most fundamentalist in the history of Islam. Even today, for example, women drive in Iran. They can't drive in Saudi Arabia. Today, for example, men and women are working in offices together in Iran. Women wear chador, but they work in offices. In Saudi Arabia, they cannot do it. So on the basis of the nature and extent of fundamentalist principles or right-wing ideology, Saudi Arabia is much worse in practice than Iran. But it has been the ally of the United States since 1932, so nobody has questioned it.</h4>
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But much more than that is involved. Throughout the Cold War, starting in 1945 when it inherited its role as a world power, the United States has seen militant Islam as a counterweight to communist parties in the Muslim world. During this entire period, the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt was not an enemy of the United States.... The U.S. government actually promoted and supported the Islamic regime that is now in power in Sudan. General Muhammad Gaafar al-Nimeiry was allied to the Islamic movement of Sudan and was a friend.</h4>
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America's two major leverages on its allies in Western Europe and Asia-the nuclear umbrella and economic superiority-had drastically diminished by the early 1970s. The U.S. was looking for new leverages over its allies. They picked the Middle East because this was where the energy resources for the industrial economies of Japan and Europe came from. An established, unchallenged American influence in this region ... could control prices and show Europe and Japan, "We can give you cheap oil. We can make your oil expensive. We hold your economic lifeline."</h4>
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This was the time of the Nixon Doctrine, namely, the use of regional powers to police the region for the United States. In the Middle East, they chose Iran and Israel. In the Pentagon, throughout most of the 1970s, they were called "our two eyes in the Middle East." In 1978, after having or perhaps because of having taken some $20 billion of military hardware from the United States, the shah of Iran fell under the weight of his own militarization. The 1979 Islamic revolution threatened American interests deeply ... materializing in an uglier form during the hostage crisis.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2049" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Within a year, quite ironically, something totally the opposite happens. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, an Islamic fundamentalist dictator promoted, with the help of the CIA, an Islamic fundamentalist resistance against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Now what you had was Islamic fundamentalists of a really hardcore variety, the majahideen in Afghanistan, taking on the "evil empire." They received billions in arms between 1981 and 1988 from the United States alone. Add additional support from Saudi Arabia, under American encouragement.... American operatives went about the Muslim world recruiting for the jihad in Afghanistan, because the U.S. saw it as an opportunity to mobilize the Muslim world against communism. That opportunity was exploited by recruiting majahideen in Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, and Palestine. From everywhere they came. They received training from the CIA. They received arms from the CIA. I have argued in some of my writings that the notion of jihad as "just struggle" had not existed in the Muslim world since the tenth century until the United States revived it during its jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Since then, almost every Islamic militant, including those in Israel, Algeria, and Egypt ... has been trained in Afghanistan. The CIA people call it "Islamic blowback."</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
These are aspects that the American media is not willing to touch on. The New York Times' four foreign affairs columnists are neither qualified nor would they want to be qualified to comment on these realities.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
What side effects have U.S. support of the mujahideen had on Pakistani society?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2050" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
One is the extraordinary proliferation of drugs and guns. Something like $10 billion in arms was pumped into Pakistan and Afghanistan. Half of it at least rebounded and became part of international trade. Much of it ended up in Pakistan. So, you have a situation in Pakistan where almost every third man is armed ... with automatic weapons, Kalishnikovs and grenade launchers. What used to be small crimes have now become big crimes, because petty thieves are armed with weapons that can lead to killings if they feel threatened. In 1979, at the advent of the Afghanistan revolution, there were an estimated 110,000 drug addicts in Pakistan, mostly addicted to opium, some to hashish. Today, we have 5 million addicts. Opium has become a big trade through Pakistan. It comes from Afghanistan and Iran. We have an estimated $4 billion trade in Afghan drugs. In a country whose total foreign exports were $6 billion before all this, you introduce $4 billion in trade in drugs. We have created in Pakistan an entire class of rich drug dealers who are paying off this politician here, that bureaucrat there, that port authority there. The political system of the whole country has become enmeshed with the drug mafia. It is not quite as bad as Colombia yet. But it's very close to it.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2051" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The third effect is probably the most serious. Pakistan is a very heterogenous society. There are six ethnic groups living together with a combination of antagonism and collaboration. The antagonism consists of something like, "You speak Baluch. I speak Urdu. Our children play together. They have quarreled with each other. My child has beaten your child.... We get into an argument over whose child was worse." Previously, it was an argument. Today, bullets can fly. So what used to be, because of ethnic differences in our society, completely minor, local, street arguments, are now made with guns.... After a while these little things accumulate and create ethnic warfare...</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
***</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p47<br />THE TALIBAN</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2052" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Moving to Afghanistan and the evolving situation there. The Taliban movement, you suggest in an article, has connections with not just Pakistan but also with the United States.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Afghanistan has suffered criminal neglect at the hands of the United States and its media. In 1979 and 1980, when the Afghan people started resisting Soviet intervention, the whole of America and Europe mobilized on their side. For the media, it was such a big story that CBS paid money to stage a battle that it could broadcast as an exclusive. Afghanistan was in the news every day. It disappeared from the news the day the Soviets withdrew. Then, Afghanistan was abandoned by the media, by</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2053" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
the American government, by American academics, and as a result by the American people. These people who fought the West's battle with the West's money and with the West's arms, and in the process distorted themselves, distorted Pakistan, and contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union, found themselves totally abandoned after the Cold War. The Taliban's rise takes place in that vacuum.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2054" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The Afghan majahideen fell to fighting with each other. They were all both warriors and drug smugglers. They were known to the CIA as drug smugglers.... There are ten factions shooting at each other, and something new develops. The Soviet Union falls apart. Its constituent republics become independent. Among those are the six Soviet republics of Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan, and Azerbaijan. These six Central Asian republics, whose majority population is Muslim, are very close to or bordering on Afghanistan, and also happen to be oil- and gas-rich states. So far their gas and oil has passed through the Soviet Union ... but now a new game starts: How is this oil and gas going to go out to the world? At this point, American corporations move in.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The American corporations want, obviously, to get hold of the oil and gas. After the Cold War, who controls which resource at whose expense and at what price? Corporations like Texaco, Amoco, and Unocal start going into Central Asia to get hold of these oil and gas fields. But how are they going to get the oil and gas out? . .. Through Turkey and via Afghanistan to Pakistan are two possibilities. Iran is the third, but they don't want to put any pipelines in Iran because Iran is an adversary of America. Therefore, Pakistan and Afghanistan become the places through which they are likely to take pipelines. And then they can cut the Russians out.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2055" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
President Clinton made personal telephone calls to the presidents of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan, urging them to sign pipeline contracts that together amount to billions. These pipelines would go through Turkey and via Afghanistan to Pakistan and take oil to the tankers that would meet them at the ports. The pipeline would go through Afghanistan. Both Pakistan and the United States .. . pick the most murderous, by far the most crazy of Islamic fundamentalist groups, the Taliban, to ensure the safety of the pipelines.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The Taliban are anti-women. Some of the highest U.S. officials have been visiting and talking to them. The general impression in our region is that the United States has been supporting them.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2056" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p50</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The U.S. concern is not who is fundamentalist and who is progressive, who treats women nicely and who treats them badly. That's not the issue. The issue is who is more likely to ensure the safety of the oil resources that the United States or its corporations could control?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2057" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p51<br />The U.S. government officials lie when they talk about human rights. They're a bunch of hypocrites and liars. You can't take it seriously.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p56<br />There are several countries that are human rights violators of extreme proportions: Indonesia, South Korea, Israel, and Turkey, and they all remain deeply tied to the United States.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p57<br />What do you think about the future of Israel?</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
In the short run, seemingly bright and powerful. In the long run, very dark.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2058" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Why do you say that?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2059" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The Israeli government, to my total surprise-or not so much surprise, I think we could have expected it-has been missing its chance for the last ten years to make peace with its Arab neighbors. For forty-five years, Israeli officials talked about wanting to be recognized. That was the only basis for peace. Now every Arab government, plus the PLO, openly recognizes Israel's right to exist. They have removed the Arab boycott. Egypt, the largest Arab country, has reached full peace with Israel. The PLO has reached full peace with Israel. King Hussein of Jordan has reached full peace with Israel. But the Israelis are continuing to take Palestinian lands and build settlements.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2060" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Their policies are to convince the Arabs that no matter what they are willing to give, Israelis want peace on their terms-more territory and more humiliation of Arabs. More expansion. It can't last that way. Israel is a small country, 5.5 million people. The Arabs are many. They are at the moment weak, disorganized, demoralized, and a bunch of country-sellers are ruling those places. That's not a permanent condition. Someday the Arabs will have to organize themselves. Once they have done that, you will see a different history beginning again, and it won't be a pretty one...</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p64<br />Franklin D. Roosevelt ... understood .. that a modicum of safety, of security, of distributive justice and the stimulation of hope in people is necessary for stability. It is this lesson that the current generation of American rulers is violating. They are going to bring upon this country some sort of an upheaval.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2061" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p65<br />Social movements are the most unpredictable of historical phenomena. No one, no scholars have yet found a formula for predicting revolutions or upheavals.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
***</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p77<br />SOME OF THE NEWS FIT TO PRINT</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
You used to write fairy frequently for the New York Times. It's been literally years since you had an op-ed in the paper. What happened there?</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
It is rather ironic, I think, that the New York Times was publishing me quite frequently during 1978 to 1980, when A.M. Rosenthal, a right-wing Zionist, was its editor. The ban on us, including Edward Said, has occurred generally speaking from the time that Joseph Lelyveld, a very liberal Zionist, came in as editor. I am suggesting, then, that a change of personnel might have had something to do with it. Because Rosenthal was a right-wing Zionist, he probably felt that he would be freer from attacks of bias if he used a few tokens like myself or Said.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2062" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
There is a second reason, I think a larger one. There has been a very deep shift in the climate of this country toward the right. It is this change that defines this extraordinary phenomenon that a twice-elected American president from the Democratic Party [Clinton] has been the one to effectively abolish the gains of the New Deal and is yet by and large applauded despite all his dissimulations, lies, and undignified behavior. What is remarkable is that the liberal Democratic establishment, including the media, have mostly been favorable to Clinton. Two days after admitting that he had committed perjury and had lied about having sexual relations with a twenty-one-year-old in the Oval Office, he launches a military attack on Afghanistan and Sudan without giving reasonable proof of anything. He engages in an untrammeled unilateralism, and the newspapers, including the New York Times, come out editorially to say that he is now acting like the commander-in-chief of the United States. There has been a shift in this environment toward intolerance of dissent, toward defining once again the boundaries of dissent, which had been broken during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. It's the breaking of those boundaries by young people that allowed us to become visible in the mainstream. Those boundaries have been redrawn, and we are on the other side of it. That's the larger question than the personnel issue of Rosenthal and Lelyveld.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2063" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Lastly, intellect as a whole is under assault in America, and social intellect in particular. The scientist can do whatever he wants to. But the social intellect is under assault in very insidious ways. The publishers are not really publishing radical works. The media are extraordinarily full of vacuous talk. People sit around on television and radio talk shows and pontificate on Islam, China, Japan, India, the Arabs. None of them that I can recall knows a single language of these places on which they are pontificating, can identify five central dates of our history, can look at the roots of any struggle. We happen to be talking at a time when Osama bin Laden is a central figure of the news and discourse in America. To date, no one has examined what has produced Osama bin Laden. There have been hints that he worked with the CIA, that he first engaged in violence because he was brought in to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. There are hints that he was recruited into the jihad by the CIA. The United States and the Saudis financed it. But this is not enough. No one has identified how his country, Saudi Arabia, has been robbed by Western corporations and Western powers. No one has identified what bin Laden grew up seeing. The Saudi princes, this one-family state, have handed over the oil resources of the Arab people to the West and its investment firms. He has seen it being robbed. All through this time, he had only one satisfaction: his country is not occupied. There are no American, French, or British troops in his country. Then he realizes, in the early 1990s, that even this small pleasure has been taken away from him. He has already been socialized by the CIA, armed by the Americans, and trained to believe deeply that when a foreigner comes into your land, you become violent. You fight. That was what the jihad in Afghanistan was about.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
This whole phenomenon of jihad as an international armed struggle never existed in the last five centuries. It was brought into being and pan-Islamized by the American effort.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2064" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p85<br />I think we should begin by recognizing that Pakistani and Indian rulers are caught in medieval militaristic minds. They are no more modern than the Clintons and the Bushes, who see power in terms of military prowess. We are living in modern times throughout the world and yet are dominated by medieval minds.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p99<br />Thomas Friedman of the New York Times said that the terrorists "are driven by a generalized hatred of the U.S.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2065" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Thomas Friedman is a New York Times columnist. One does not associate either intelligence or depth with a New York Times columnist. Thomas Friedman writes without information or knowledge. It's an ignorant remark. It's a waste of time to try to respond to it. He actually in that article said that they hate America because America is so wealthy. He said that they hate America because it has technology and science and their children are all imitating America. This is nonsense. This is not analysis. This is witchcraft.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
David Anderson is a senior lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He comments that this battle will be a "long, perhaps never-ending, attritional war. Pandora's box has been opened, and it won't be closed again," discussing this issue of retaliation, counter-retaliation, an eye-for-an eye.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2066" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
I don't see anything as historically permanent. Nothing in history has been permanent. Frankly, I don't think American power is permanent. It itself is very temporary, and therefore its excesses are impermanent and reactions to those excesses have to be, by definition, impermanent. If Anderson means the next five years, then he's right. If he means the next fifty, he may not be right. America is a troubled country, for too many reasons. One is that its economic capabilities do not harmonize with its military capabilities. The second is that its ruling class's will to dominate is not quite shared by its people's will to dominate.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
What's the evidence for that?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2067" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The evidence is massive. If the American people had a will to dominate the world, they would have Iynched Bill Clinton at the first sign of his hanky-panky in the White House. I'll tell you why. Britain had a will to dominate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Britain punished for very small crimes its most famous empire builders. Robert Clive was impeached and Warren Hastings was impeached, because an imperial society instinctively knows that it will not command respect on a global scale unless it shows uprightness at home. Unless it shows uprightness at home, it cannot commit excesses abroad. That's why imperial countries very often tended to be puritanical societies. The people of America don't want Clinton to resign because they think he's been a good president. They can separate his being commander-in-chief from his personal behavior. This is not a people with a will to rule. This is a people with a will to violence, yes, but not a will to dominate.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
You can take other examples. A will to dominate means a willingness to sacrifice, to pay the price of it. The American public does not want American boys dying. So, in Somalia, when American Marines were attacked, the United States pulled out and sent in Pakistanis to do their dirty work and clean up the mess. They don't want to send troops abroad. They don't want to die in foreign lands. That is, they don't want to pay the price of power abroad, which they were willing to do during much of the Cold War. This changes after Vietnam. In that sense, George Bush notwithstanding, the "Vietnam syndrome" is very much alive.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2068" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
***<br />ENGAGING IRAN</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Iran now has someone who is considered a "moderate" president, Mohammad Khatami. There have been some openings between the United States and Iran. What's your assessment of what's going on now inside Iran itself politically and externally? Does this signal a possible normalization of relations with the United States?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2069" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
There has not been any opening between the United States and Iran yet. There have been gestures. The American wrestlers went there and the Iranian wrestlers came here and that kind of thing, but there has been no substantive opening between the two countries. Mohammad Khatami's government is being challenged by the radical conservatives in Iran. Therefore, what you are witnessing in Iran today is a struggle for power between two brands of Islamic politics. It's Islamism in both cases. One is more democratic than the other. One is more moderate, the other more radical. One has been in power, the other has not.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2070" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Khatami is new. He comes in with new social forces behind him. It is a very interesting struggle because beneath it are very fundamental issues about the future of Iran or the future of any third-world, particularly Muslim, society. Issues of the nature of the relationship between civil society and the state. Issues of the nature of culture and the relationship of culture to power. The issue of the nature of power itself: how is it to be made more accountable to the citizen, to the public? What is the nature of public discourse, the nature of the relationship between faith and politics? Those are all very fundamental issues at stake in the current struggle for power in Iran.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2071" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Khatami's group, if we are to use Western terminology, and it is not always applicable, represents an enlightened liberal view of the relationship between power and civil society. This group would like to see women freer, with fewer constraints than have been imposed on them under the present Islamic rule. They would have more freedom of speech and association than was allowed by the revolutionary system under Ayatollah Khomeini or than would be allowed by the conservative groups. They would seek more normal relations with Western countries and with America than the previous leadership. For all those issues, even in terms of the overall expression of Iran's politics, this is progress over what had preceded Khatami's administration. But remember that this government is the product of an election. Iran has continued to hold free elections, with fewer choices, but still free elections, which is not true of Saudi Arabia.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
One would think that the Islamic theocracy in Iran would be sympathetic and supportive of a neighboring theocracy in Afghanistan, the government of the Taliban. But that's not the case at all. Iran is actively supporting what is called the "northern alliance" under Ahmed Shah Masood. What's going on there?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2072" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
There is nothing surprising there. For one thing, we should not see Islamic movements as monolithic. There is a large variety of them. They range from the very modern to the totally primitive-in fact, so primitive that in the whole of Islamic history there is no parallel to them. The Taliban, for example, are literally unique in Islamic history in many respects. They are a product of modern times, of a certain social disease. The immediate reason for Iran to feel antipathy to the Taliban is that they are viewed by Iranians as suffering from two terminal defects. The first is that the Taliban were supported by the United States.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Initially.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Until recently, actually. They will again be supported by them once this Osama bin Laden issue disappears. The second is that they are sectarian, orthodox Sunni Muslims. The Iranians are Shiites. As sectarian Sunni Muslims, they hate Shiites. It's like fundamentalist Catholics up against fundamentalist Protestants, both trying to set up a theocracy. Obviously there will be conflict between the two. It's a bad analogy, but it comes closest to what I can cite to you.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2073" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Recently there have been a number of advertisements and articles from U.S. commercial interests questioning the policy of sanctions and isolation of Iran. Particularly the U.S.-dominated oil, gas, and chemical multinationals are lobbying the government to reconsider its position. What do you make of this particular situation, where it seems that ideology is trumping commercial interests? Usually the commercial interests dominate, but here several U.S. administrations have seen it more important to isolate Iran diplomatically and to pay whatever economic cost that incurs.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
It's an interesting problem. This is one of the myths of the left. Sometimes non-commercial vested interests get the better of commercial vested interests. A very good example would be the China lobby in the 1940s and 1950s. They were primarily responsible for blocking the United States from opening up to China-which the United States has done now, but almost twenty-five years too late-despite the fact that it was not in the American interest to maintain the blockade on China.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2074" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Something similar is happening in the case of Cuba, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. A lot of American companies are interested in getting into Cuba. It's ninety miles away from the American coast. It has nearly 95 percent literacy, a skilled labor force, and an educated middle class. It would make a very good export platform because it also has very cheap labor; yet it remains closed because of the Cuban lobby. The lobby is very powerful. It bribes Congressmen. It has political action committees. So, it's a case of the tail wagging the dog.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2075" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The same is true of Iran. The Israeli government still doesn't approve of Iran. It feels that Iran is a big Middle Eastern country not wanting to accept Israel's control of Jerusalem. Therefore, Israel says Iran is dangerous and must be isolated. I think the Israeli lobby has done a lot to keep Iran isolated.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The New York Times had a front-page story on Iran testing a medium-range missile with a range of 800 miles. The headline says it is able to hit Israel and Saudi Arabia. They could have mentioned Turkey, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. Why the choices?</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Because Israel is a strategic ally and Saudi Arabia has a strategic position. By saying that, you are creating a public opinion. The American public doesn't care if Iran hits or doesn't hit Pakistan. It cares if it hits Israel or Saudi Arabia, although it has less reason to hit Saudi Arabia and Israel than it has to hit Pakistan. It's not about to make war on either.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Let's go back to that idea you expressed about commercial interests vs. non-commercial ones. For example, in Guatemala, the United Fruit Company had an enormous economic interest there, and it was able to influence the 1954 coup.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2076" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
I didn't say it's always the case. Occasionally it is the case. The norm is that commercial interests get their way. Their pressure groups are very strong. But occasionally you'll get a situation in which a very strong pressure group forms and creates for itself a cultural legitimacy. A convergence occurs between the rhetoric of the state and the pressure group. Take Cuba, for example. Cuba has been portrayed for almost forty years as a bad boy in the rhetoric of American officialdom. The media have by and large supported that. A lobby has developed along with that. It's incredibly strong in some ways. It's very focused. It has I only one goal: to prevent the resumption of normal relations between Cuba and the United States.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
TURKEY AND ISRAEL</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
What are your views about recent events in Turkey? There seems to be a struggle between some Islamicist formations and more secular ones.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2077" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
It has been nearly eighty years now since Turkey declared itself to be European. Turkey's identity has developed for the last eighty years away from the Middle East. Its ruling class doesn't want to be part of the Middle East. Turkey therefore has found itself making an alliance with Israel. On the other hand, the people generally know that they are not really Europeans, after all, and recognize that even more now. You have an Islamic movement that has taken hold in Turkey. It's a strong movement; in fact, it was the party in power and was dismissed unconstitutionally by the intervention of the army. Turkey is a troubled country because it is falling between the Middle Eastern stool and the European stool, and it doesn't seem to fit the crack.</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2078" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
What's the logic behind Turkey's military alliance with Israel?</h4>
<h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The logic of that is that Turkey has at this moment one major ally and benefactor: the United States. The U.S. has helped forge the alliance between Turkey and Israel. The logic is really to encircle the Arabs. The Arabs are at the moment, if I could use the term, the true captive peoples. At the same time, they are a people who are showing signs of not wanting to remain captive. Therefore, the United States fears that they may rise again or they may learn to resist. When they resist, the U.S. will need a strong policeman to put them down. Israel and Turkey ~ <t allies.="" are="" e="" good="" h4="" very=""><h4 style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE .</h4>
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The genocide of the Armenians in 1915 by the Ottoman Turks is called the first genocide of the twentieth century. Turkish governments continue to deny it to this day.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2079" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
You may disagree with me on this one because I don't think it was done by the Ottoman Turks. The Turkish genocide of Armenians was the first expression of Turkish nationalism. The caliphate was still there, the Ottomans were still ruling, but they were already ceasing to be Ottoman rulers and becoming Turkish nationalists, which is why they lost the Middle East. They lost the loyalties of the Arabs because they turned to nationalism. Armenians had lived with the caliphate in relative safety until this particular ideology of difference, that is, nationalism, took hold. The ideology was that anyone who was not a Turk by blood was the Other. The Armenians were not killed for being Christian. They were killed for being Armenian. The Armenians in a very genuine sense were the first victims of the rise of nationalism in the Middle East. The Jews were the last victims of the rise of nationalism in Europe. And I hope that the Kurds are the last victims of the rise of nationalism in the Middle East.</h4>
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Princeton University has now a chair funded by the Turkish government on Turkish history. Its principal function is to refute the genocide of the Armenians.</h4>
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Is that really true? My God. All I can say, in that case, is that it's one more thing that Princeton is doing that I'm ashamed of. I think that the Turkish people will not be a free people until such time as it comes to terms with its own history, especially its modern history, which includes the genocide of the Armenians.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2080" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
To say that it was a civil war is like saying that Turks were not a majority people. It is also like saying that Turks were not the upholders of power. Power was in their hands; a majority was in their hands; and the territory was theirs. They cannot dismiss it all as a civil war. They will be a bigger, greater people if they acknowledge this, just as I think the Germans are a bigger people today because they acknowledged the Holocaust. The Israelis would be a bigger people today if they acknowledged that they have committed a crime, a massive crime, against the Palestinians. The same is true of the Turks with the Armenians.</h4>
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What you're suggesting is something that makes some Israelis very uncomfortable, the symmetry you were outlining there, the genocide of the Armenians, the Holocaust, and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2081" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
It has been the destruction of a people. I should have added the Americans with American Indians. It's my failure that I did not remember the American Indians. But all that the Americans can say, if they want to say it in their favor, is that they didn't do it all at one time in a specified time and space frame. All that the Israelis can say is that they didn't really build gas chambers. For God's sake. They took lands from people; they took away water; they destroyed a culture. They are still doing it. A people doesn't survive if you take away from them their land, water, and culture. They drove people away. This is what the Israelis did in Palestine. True, the bloodshed was not the same; the number of heads chopped off was not the same; the number of deaths was not the same. Yet deprivation of a homeland, an attempt to obliterate a people from their soil, was there. Unfortunately, this is still going on. So, yes, I know how much the comparison must grate on the Israelis, and perhaps also on the Armenians. In fact, I found it striking that the Armenians I met in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine and Lebanon, were so strongly pro-Palestinian precisely because they knew instinctively that there was not symmetry, that these four cases are not symmetrical. They may be asymmetrical, but they are on the same terrain. One is a higher peak than the other, but the terrain is the same.</h4>
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Your views on Zionism are largely I think shaped by your earlier comments on opposition to exclusivity and "the pitfalls of national consciousness. " i9</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2082" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
I praised earlier the Indian nationalism of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, because it was not exclusionary. It did not envisage a Hindu India in which there was no space for Muslims or Christians. In Israel today, even today, after the majority of the Palestinians have been either driven out or expelled-or are remaining as an occupied people-those Palestinians who are given citizenship rights are still third-class citizens. They don't have full citizenship rights. You speak to any American Jew here and ask him if he would like to live in America under the conditions that the Arab lives in Israel. His answer would be no. Don't say I'm making a comparison with Israel, because then his answer may change. Say, "Supposing as a Jew your property could be taken over by the state for security reasons while the same thing can't happen to the Christians." Say, "As a Jew you cannot join the armed forces, but the Christians can. Therefore, as a Jew you will not have access to the housing, to the educational scholarships, to the welfare system, to those lands to which Christians have access. Would you call yourself a citizen of America? " His answer would be no. It's an exclusionist state, a racialist state. I'm sorry.</h4>
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p111<br />THE CHANGING OF THE GUARDS</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2083" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
You write about "the tenacity with which colonial culture has, after decolonization, held out and tightened its grip on Pakistan and India as a case in point. Its persistence is defined by the failure of the post-colonial elite to spawn alternative values and styles as foundations of a new culture. "</h4>
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The post-colonial state is a bad version of the colonial one. The structures of the post-colonial state are the same, that is, a centralized power, a paternalistic bureaucracy, and an alliance of the military and landed notables. The structure of the state has remained the same; but new problems have emerged, and this old system cannot work....</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2084" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
The colonial state was not about being of service to the colonized. It was about exploitation and extraction of resources. The post-colonial state is exactly the same. This intelligentsia, this bourgeoisie-the propertied class of the third world-is as heartless in its lack of concern for the poor, in some ways even more so, as the colonial state. There has been a near breakdown of the institutions of higher learning. A new intelligentsia, rooted in that soil, informed of the country's problems, having some sense of responsibility as to what is happening to people, has not been produced. They are now sending their children to American universities, just like Iranians did a bit earlier. There were 60,000 Iranian students studying in the United States at the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979. There are 15,000 to 20,000 Pakistanis studying here now. More will be coming. Even the middle class, the intelligentsia, is cut off from the problems of the people. They are building a system of apartheid in which the poor are separated from the rich and the rich are connected to the West, to the metropolis. It's a bad situation. I hope it will change. I should not give you as bleak a picture, because there are people who are trying to turn this tide in a different direction or stop it; they are small, but they are trying.</h4>
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Yeats wrote about something you're describing in his poem "The Great Day ": "The beggars have changed places but the lash goes on. " So, even with independence, there hasn't been significant change. Didn't Frantz Fanon say liberation is not merely changing one policeman for another?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2085" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
I don't remember the exact quote, but that was roughly his argument also: unless we think in terms of alternatives that empower people and make alternative plans for economic growth, then the future remains quite bleak. Fifty years after the start of decolonialization, I think we are turning around to admit that it was a necessary step but not a sufficient one. We have not gone from the necessary to the sufficient.</h4>
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</h4>
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Groups like the Third World Network, based in Penang, Malaysia, suggest that through the mechanisms of so-called free trade agreements, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, the hegemonic powers have to some extent recolonized the former colonies.</h4>
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I agree with the argument, but I have one difficulty with it. It seems to me that we are always reinventing the wheel in which we have been caught anyway for a long, long time. I don't think that we are going through a process of recolonization because we never really went through the process of decolonialization. Take my country. Pakistan is a large country; it has a population of 140 million now. The British ruled this area with the help of three institutions: the army, the bureaucracy, and the feudal landlords. The army and the bureaucracy had top commanders who were English. Top civil servants were often English. Just below them there were a large number of Indians serving them. See the structure. The reality was that our economy was tied to the metropolitan economy. We produced to supply Britain. We bought our consumer goods mostly from Europe or the industrialized world.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2086" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Now take a look at Pakistan for the last fifty years. It's exactly that situation. A British-trained army, a British-trained bureaucracy, and the same feudal landlords who had collaborated with the British constitute the triangle of power. We buy most of our armaments from the West and China. We produce very little on our own. Most of our big products come from industrialized countries. The numbers have increased. Previously imports came from Britain. Now it is mostly America, plus Japan and Germany. Globalization has increased the number of buyers and sellers in our countries. Nothing else has changed. So, the economic reality has not changed and the political reality has not changed. Why, then, should we talk about recolonization? Pakistan never became a decolonized country. Never. And it is not being recolonized in the period of globalization. Globalization is merely changing the structure of the international economy. It is not changing the structure of our economies.</h4>
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</h4>
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The Indian environmentalist and activist Vandana Shiva told me a story. She went to a village and was describing globalization, the expansion of multinational corporations into India and elsewhere. A villager wasn't quite getting it. Then all of a sudden he said, "Oh, now I understand. The East India Company has returned."</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2087" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
That's a very good story. The Company Bahadur, they used to call them.</h4>
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</h4>
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The East India Company being perhaps the first of the multi-nationals.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2088" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
There was the Dutch East India Company and several others. The East India Company was the ultimate winner in India. Today, of course, the intensity and scope of multinationals have increased vastly. The means of communication and production have increased. The rapidity of production and the power and capabilities to reproduce have expanded enormously. With increasing volume, the number of traders and producers has increased. But the structure has not changed. I'm afraid that I'm more conventional in this regard. I go with the Monthly Review group's argument that the structure of capitalism has not changed significantly. Its intensity and scope have.</h4>
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***</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2089" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p115<br />PBS is very strange. The BBC did a very successful film on Edward Said and his work, The Idea of Empire, and they did this documentary on me. They are both American documentaries in some ways. Both of us have lived here and made some name here, Edward of course much more than me. We have played a role in American history: I in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and other things, and Edward in the academy particularly. Yet PBS and no other American network has ever thought of replaying them. A lot of money has been spent in doing these documentaries by the BBC. PBS takes things like Masterpiece Theater from the BBC but nothing serious like this.</h4>
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p120</h4>
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MARX'S LEGACY</h4>
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Let's move on. 1998 is the l50th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. There are various symposia and conferences being held around this event. What are your thoughts on the relevance of Karl Marx and his legacy today?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2090" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
First, Marx focused our attention on the poor and the working class. Second, Marx and Frederick Engels rather brilliantly warned of and chalked out the exploitative oppressive patterns of capitalist development and the workings of the capitalist system. That capitalism has not been defeated or changed and continues to demonstrate a great deal of resiliency and dynamism are both true and were actually argued by Marx rather consistently; but it doesn't take away from the fact that capitalism is an exceptionally unjust system. We still have to figure out how to do away with it, or at least its worst features. That challenge remains, and that challenge was posed by Karl Marx.</h4>
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Finally, the biggest achievement of Marx and Marxism may have been to offer us the methodology of analyzing social and historical realities. I do not think anyone has so far come up with a substitute for historical materialism as an explanation for the turns of history, the processes of history. Nor has anyone elaborated the idea of dialectics into a methodological system in the way that Marx and Marxism did. These are not mean achievements. These are high achievements, and were made within the context of focusing the minds of the educated class, or at least a certain sector of it, on peoples other than themselves-the poor, the working class, the oppressed, the weak, even the distant ones. This had never happened before.</h4>
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The history of humanity is replete with the rejection of the Other. It is replete with callousness toward the Other, toward the habit of and traditions of and the intellectual outlook of that which is not you or not yours. Marx and Marxism focused the intelligentsia's attention in a positive way on the Other, the poor, the weak. And at least a section of the intellectual class, the intelligentsia as a whole, students, others, saw it as their moral and intellectual responsibility to comprehend reality in order to change it, to make the world better for all and not for themselves only. I don't think there had ever been such a class in history before. Once such a culture was created, you had a completely different view of producing literature and producing cinema, which we see, for example, in the films of Vittorio DeSica, Satyajit Ray, or, for that matter, people like Jean-Luc Godard. These are works of artists of the 1930s, 1940s, into the 1950s, replete with the idea of the Other viewed in positive, empathetic, and sympathetic ways. It introduced the notion of kindness, of a non-narcissistic outlook on life. These are not minor achievements. To the extent that these existed before Marx, to the extent they existed at all, they were associated with the religious person. This was the first time you saw secular intellect focus on issues of the common good.</h4>
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***</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2093" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p122</h4>
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What accounts for capitalism's relative resilience, its ability to survive as an economic system?</h4>
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It's a powerful system based on two important premises. One is that human beings are greedy. Greed is the strongest singular drive in the human animal. Greed for everything-money, power, accumulation, things to consume. The second is that reproduction is possible and good, and therefore, to organize for reproduction is the epitome of human endeavor. It's a very dynamic system. It takes unusual individuals who wouldn't be caught in it.</h4>
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p127</h4>
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Do you have a sense, being outside the United States after living and working here for so many years, that your perspective on the country is changing?</h4>
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Not really. I come. Often I spend two or three months each year in the United States. The country is changing. My perspective, I don't think, is changing very much. It's a country that has lost most of the gains that it had made from the New Deal, from the civil rights movement, and from the peace movement. These were major gains that I did not expect America to squander.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2095" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2096" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
What do you attribute that to?</h4>
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For one thing, those long years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but those long years themselves indicate that something had changed. Then the coming to office of someone as visionless and as unreliable as Bill Clinton. Finally, and it's important, this is too comfortable a country. Where there is so much comfort possible, especially for radicals and former radicals, a softening with age essentially occurs. There are very few hard nuts that don't change, like Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. You can't expect everyone to be that tough.</h4>
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***<br />p131</h4>
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OPPRESSION AND IDENTITY</h4>
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The argument is made that the Jewish people have been persecuted historically for millennia and have only one homeland: Israel. On the other hand, there are more than twenty Arab states. The Palestinians could go to any one of them, speak Arabic, and be culturally at home. How do you respond to that?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2098" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
This is a polemical argument. It's very difficult to respond to it without sounding polemical. It is a historical fact that the Jewish people suffered unique forms of persecution all over Europe. They confronted prejudices even in the United States until very recently. It is also historically known and fully recognized by the best of Jewish scholars that, in relative terms, Jews had a much better time in the Islamic world. So that right up to the nineteenth century we spoke of the Judeo-Arab civilization in the same way as during the last half of the twentieth century we speak of the Judeo-Christian civilization. European anti-Semitism, which was not anti-Semitism of the Arabs, climaxed in the Holocaust. If the establishment of a Jewish nation within a specific territory and statehood was called for because of this persecution, it should have occurred in the Western world-in America or Europe-and not in the Arab world. The Arabs were not guilty of persecuting the Jews. The guilt was here, and therefore its expiation should have occurred here. I don't believe that expiation is a proper answer to such problems, but if expiation was needed, perhaps the Allies could have decided that a Jewish state would be founded in a part of Germany. Or they could have decided that it would be in a part of Poland or America. Why displace the Palestinians, who have lived in Palestine for more than 2,000 years, who have tilled that soil, who have built cities there, why displace them to accommodate the guilt of Europe? That's one answer. Sounds polemical.</h4>
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But my real answer is that statehood, nationhood, is not a solution to the problems of our time. Black people have been persecuted here for a very long time. They were brought in as slaves. They were kept as indentured labor. They have remained in one way or another discriminated against in this country. Is the answer the creation of a black state in the South? Shall we turn Alabama and Mississippi into two black nations? No. The answer is: end the discrimination, overcome the prejudices, bring about integration of two peoples, restore democratic rights, create binational states, and build multicultural entities. The answer to evil is removal of evil, not its consolidation into statehoods.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2099" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
So, you create a Jewish state. What comes out of it? What comes out of it, really, is a state in which I honestly think any self-respecting American or European Jew would not want to live. I will tell you why. If the United States had laws that Israel has, no self-respecting Jew would live here. It would discriminate against the Jews. They would not be able to buy property in the same way as the Christians do. They would not be able to join the army. They would not work in the civil service. In Israel today there are two categories of citizens. There are Jews and Arabs. The Arabs are third-class citizens without all the citizenship rights that Jews enjoy. Is that a statehood that the Jews would like to have here? The answer is no. I wouldn't want any Jewish person or black person or Muslim person to live in an America that discriminates against them. The solution is multiculturalism, binationalism, and equality of citizenship. It's not exclusionary statehoods.</h4>
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p135<br />The United States has sowed in the Middle East and South Asia very poisonous seeds. These seeds are growing now. Some have ripened, and others are ripening. An examination of why they were sown, what has grown, and how they should be reaped is needed. Missiles won't solve the problem.</h4>
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PATHOLOGIES OF POWER</h4>
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One of the terms you've coined is "pathologies of power" in postcolonial states. " What do you mean by that?</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2100" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
By that I mean the fact that third-world politicians and institutions, individuals who hold power and the institutions they run, do not express themselves most of the time in reasonable ways.</h4>
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Saddam Hussein of Iraq requiring typewriters to be licensed is pathological. Saudi Arabia opening universities, which is a good thing, but fearing that the students shouldn't get together-because they might talk politics or revolt-and therefore doing everything to prevent the students from discussing matters, from meeting together, and from collaborating-this is the exact reverse of what universities should be.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2101" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Third-world writers are among the most endangered species in the world. Nearly all Arab writers today are living in exile of one form or another. The only great novelist Saudi Arabia has ever produced in its entire history is Abdelrahman Munif. He has been divested of his citizenship. It is as if a body politic, a social body, is cutting itself off from something important, something creative. Munif lives in exile in Damascus. Adonis, another important writer, is a Syrian. He lives in exile in Paris or sometimes in Beirut. In Pakistan, since independence, I think there has not been a major literary figure who has not served time in prison. To me these are all examples of sickening behavior on the part of the state which expresses an illness, a pathology. These are not natural ways of behaving.</h4>
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There's the case also of the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin.</h4>
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Taslima Nasrin is one of the recent examples of what is happening. This is not normal, especially when you think of the fact that most of these writers, a majority of them, are really not saying or doing anything that is threatening. Taslima Nasrin is not a great writer. She wrote a novel in which she portrays the risks that the Hindu minority runs in a majority Muslim Bangladesh. She is alleged to have given an interview in which she said something to the effect that she does not believe that the traditions of the prophet Muhammad are binding on Muslims. Whether she said it or not, we do not know. She denies it, and for that she's been driven out. These are all pathological behaviors.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2103" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
I can cite many more. Benazir Bhutto, in the space of three and a half years as prime minister, stole nearly $2 billion from a poor country like Pakistan. That's pathology. She doesn't need that kind of money. She was already a rich woman.</h4>
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</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2127" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
Nawaz Sharif says that he thinks the introduction of sharia, Islamic law, would be a good thing for Pakistan.</h4>
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I wrote about this as soon as Sharif proposed a fifteenth amendment to the constitution. I argued that Islam has been, in Pakistan and also in other Muslim countries, a refuge for weak and scoundrel regimes and rulers in modern times. Whenever they feel threatened and isolated-and are losing their grip, losing popularity, and losing the consensus of the people-they bring out Islam from the closet and use it as a political weapon. That's what Nawaz Sharif is doing. He has been in office now for nearly two years. Pakistan's economy has not improved. It's in very bad shape. He tested nuclear weapons and Pakistan's security has not improved. The perception of security has not improved. Our basic disputes with India have not been resolved. He supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, which has brought us in conflict with Iran, as if we needed one more hostile neighbor. And there are very serious allegations now, starting with an article that appeared in the London Observer, that in his first government in 1990 he had stolen a lot of money and transferred it to foreign banks. Under these conditions, Sharif pulls Islam out from the closet and he starts the process of "Islamization." This is a typical use of religion for political purposes.</h4>
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***</h4>
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p148<br />Switch on your television. All the advertisements are about your individual comfort, consumption, and pleasure. It is drilled into children and adults day in and day out. It has an effect that shapes our minds. The notion of solidarity beyond self and beyond family, beyond the small group, has become increasingly alien in modern consumer-oriented American society.</h4>
<h4 id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427648711354_2123" style="margin: 1.33em 0px; padding: 0px;">
p149<br />The United States has a $7 trillion dollar economy. One trillion dollars, one-seventh of the economy, is spent on marketing.</h4>
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p152<br />If we do not take risks we cannot serve the common<br /><br />(Message over 64 KB, truncated)</h4>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-67698842803915178892015-03-29T10:02:00.002-07:002015-03-29T10:02:59.134-07:00Local ANC politics and disruption of the Quigney CPF<img height="460" src="https://sp.yimg.com/ib/th?id=HN.608012432982543282&pid=15.1&H=115&W=160&P=0" width="640" /><br />
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<b>Quigney CPF bust up by City Councillors</b></div>
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1.. Anonymous Pony Express regarding Councillor Siyabonga Jabavu<br />2.. The Chief Whip, ANC Buffalo City Denunciation<br />3.. Culminating cycles of ANC Denunciations<br /><br /><br />4.. Political Parties and social movements<br />5.. Footnote: Pony Express dated 7th July 2006<br /><br />1.. PONY EXPRESS CONCERNING COUNCILLOR JABAVU<br /><br />A Pony Express, an occasional newsletter distributed "samizdat style"<br />in the Quigney and signed by a "Brian Botha", was circulated by Councilor<br />Jabavu at a Special Branch Executive Committee Meeting held in the ANC<br />Constituency Offices in Buffalo Flats. Nobody knows who Brian Botha is, but<br />his name did crop up previously as a signatory to a letter of allegations<br />against the Quigney Community Policing Forum, targeting myself, Berend<br />Schuitema, which was hand delivered by Bobby Button to the Chairperson of<br />the East London Community Policing Forum some weeks ago. That letter was<br />written ostensibly on behalf of the "Quigney Residents Association". That<br />letter from "Mr. Botha" was read out at an East London Executive Committee<br />Meeting and a decision taken not to make any mention of it in the minutes<br />because it was regarded as part of a work of mischief continued by Bobby<br />Button.<br /><br />However, the anonymous Pony Express signed by the same name caused a<br />stir of first order proportions when Jabavu got to read it. Other letters<br />containing similar flavors and accusations as the initial Mr. Botha letter<br />as the one rejected out of hand by the Executive Committee of the EL CPF but<br />reaching the Executive Committee of the ANC Branch Executive are taken at<br />face value and treated as matter of fact. While the recent Pony Express was<br />anonymous (no one is owning up to the name "Botha", apparently its contents<br />are not contested.<br /><br />There is then this mysterious origin of the letter. But its contents<br />are no mystery as all the information can be found in records of proceedings<br />where these exist, however much is based on hearsay as many meetings where<br />statements are made go unrecorded. An example is a meeting held in the<br />Imbizo Café by a group calling itself "Quigney ANC Task Team / Quigney<br />Residents Association" convened a public meeting under pretences that it<br />would be addressed by a number of Members of Parliament. However, having<br />duped some 50 residents into attending this meeting without there ever<br />having been any arrangements made for these Members of Parliament to show<br />up, the main item of the meeting was an attack on Berend Schuitema and the<br />Quigney Sector Crime Forum. As there were no minutes taken, no attendance<br />register signed, the meeting can be regarded not only as mischievous, but<br />stirring of rumors with everyone able to take their own conclusions, most of<br />which are of the nature, "the community in the Quigney is very unhappy with<br />Berend Schuitema". So even though the Pony Express exposing Councillor<br />Jabavu's antics have caused him to rave and forward the contents to the<br />Minister of Police, whatever its contents they are based on hearsay from a<br />ghosted meeting which gave rise to waves of rumors and lies.<br /><br />On my computer I also have lots of information. Much has been shared<br />via emails with a hundred or more people. I have my suspicions about who<br />compiled the Pony Express but given the circumstances this is not my own<br />primary concern to pursue, let alone impute any bad faith motive for the<br />information having been distributed in the first place. The reason is that<br />the information is all factually correct. The only problem is that from my<br />own personal perspective some of the information is privileged and not for<br />public consumption as it was gleaned from minutes and unrecorded proceedings<br />from an ostensibly secret organization, the ANC Ward 5 Branch Executive<br />Committee.<br /><br />What I have been able to ascertain is that the person who compiled the<br />apparently libelous Pony Express, was not the person who did the<br />distribution of it. A copy was shifted under the door at the flat of Dai<br />Williams who, noticing that the name of Joe de Vries was mentioned in the<br />Pony Express, decided to confirm with him whether he knew or had received a<br />copy. Joe did not have a copy and Dai let him have one.<br /><br />That is the best I have to offer with regard to the production and<br />distribution of the Pony Express regarding the Councillor's role in the<br />Quigney. I have read the contents, and once more have to affirm that what is<br />read is the truth and nothing but the truth, and very evidently the<br />information has spilled from one mailing address to another and eventually<br />found a jacket in the very conventional format of a Microsoft Publisher,<br />much like the Quigney Voice, with a Mistral letterhead. And with regard to<br />the distribution of the Pony Express, if people who had received it had<br />given some thought to checking back to the sources rather than liberally<br />distributing themselves, then probably the while furor would have been<br />unnecessary as by now it is evident, not proven, that only one copy went<br />astray and that one copy was ventilated along by the hasty readers who all<br />felt that they had either been exposed, or had something to hide.<br /><br />As to the motive for why someone felt that editing the text and putting<br />it into Pony Express form there is no reason to look much further than the<br />evident feelings of solidarity with the real victim in the past months of<br />slander and maligning, namely Berend Schuitema. There has been duplicity and<br />collusion for the past few months with a constant ratcheting up of the<br />malicious campaign against him. This started before the3 last local<br />government elections when Councillor Jabavu, and evidently a good many ANC<br />apparatchiks in the Buffalo City Council were of the opinion that the<br />Quigney could only be won taking control over the QCPF because this was a<br />"DA stronghold". Bobby Button was found prepared to push this point as an<br />"informer" with promises for a "job" by the candidate Councillor Siyabonga<br />Jabavu and went on a door-to-door slander campaign against the QCPF in<br />general and Berend Schuitema in particular.<br /><br />This campaign was unrelenting. When slanderous letters were handed in<br />to motivate "investigations" against me at the QCPF failed, it took another<br />parallel course and elaborated through the Branch Executive Committee. As I<br />is a member of the Branch Executive Committee he had his hands tied as<br />information stopped or let ahead at the BEC had to be left unchallenged<br />because of the way normal political parties work. Eventually it got so bad<br />that he was maligned by the Chief Whip of the ANC, a certain Mr. Sonny du<br />Plessis and roundly denounced. Du Plessis bullied the meeting into the<br />position that I "should have been suspended a long time ago", and that 8in<br />any case I was not to be addressed as "comrade" by any members of the<br />branch. This had such an impact on the man that that very same night he<br />spilled his feelings to his Internet community who were appalled by what<br />they had heard.<br /><br />How can a veteran stand for such abuse, slandering the man for<br />achievements over 40 years, and still remain loyal to the ANC? Friends were<br />asking what sort of a fool I am to stand for these insults without<br />retaliating. Eventually it became clear to many of my friends that actually<br />I do feel stuck in a lousy and misplaced loyalty situation and that the best<br />thing I can and should do is to renounce my ANC membership.<br /><br />2.. THE CHIEF WHIP ANC BUFFALO CITY DENUNCIATION<br /><br />Getting back for a while to the letter written by Botha of the<br />so-called "Quigney Residents Association", the fact that the allegations it<br />was making against the QCPF and Berend Schuitema was rejected out of hand<br />and not even seriously considered, did not mean that a stop was put to this<br />mischief. Having failed to achieve their objectives in the QCPF the<br />plotters, including Councillor Jabavu, Councillor S Du Plessis and<br />Chairperson of ANC Ward 5 Branch continued their onslaught in the ANC<br />itself. Just before the local government elections held in March this year,<br />Jabavu employed Button to spread the rumor that the QCPF was now only a<br />"Democratic Alliance stronghold" but that I, as a QCPF leader, was forcing<br />members, principally Button, to canvass and vote for the Democratic<br />Alliance. This rumor was sent in shock wave to all possible areas and levels<br />of the ANC lections apparatus and I was called to account. While it was<br />evident to everyone in the QCPF, and especially those not simply members of,<br />but serving in the Branch Executive Committee of ANC Ward 5, that these were<br />rumors being employed by Jabavu to discredit Thembakazi Tuku as the Quigney<br />backed candidate as Ward Councillor, there was nothing stopping people like<br />Jabavu and Young from pursuing the matter literally to the street level.<br /><br />Roy Young then was able to call together a small group of ANC members<br />doing canvassing work on a sidewalk in the Quigney that by coincidence<br />included myself, Button and a few of Young's supporters. He decided on the<br />spot "to put an end to the problems" and myself and Button to give an<br />account of Democratic Alliance "meddling" in the QCPF. Even though I<br />objected to this impromptu decision of Young that looked like a witch-hunt,<br />I nevertheless took the opportunity to counter the story that Button had<br />concocted. While we thought that Button's lies had been exposed were amazed<br />to receive a "report" made of this "meeting" according it formal status and<br />calling for disciplinary action to be taken against me.<br /><br />This report read as follows:<br /><br />Report Barend Schuitema versus Bobby Button - 18th February 2006<br /><br />The purpose of the meeting was to establish the correct version of<br />events leading to the allegations by Cde Button that Cde Schuitema<br />encouraged/advised him to canvass for the DA.<br /><br />With the very important upcoming local government elections on 1st<br />March 2006, it was prudent for the local branch leadership to intervene as a<br />matter of urgency, to resolve the issue between the two comrades.<br /><br />Each of the two comrades was granted an opportunity to air their views<br />respectively. It was established that Avis Rens (DA) appraoched Cde Button<br />to canvass for her in the Quigney, after which he would be compensated. Cde<br />Button, as an ordinary member of the ANC, appraoched Cde Barend Schuitema<br />(Deputy Chairperson of the Branch) for political guidance in this regard.<br /><br />Cde Schuitema, as part of the leadership, warned Button that he<br />(Button) would be treading on dangerous ground should he accede to Rens'<br />offer, as he was now an IEC Official/volunteer (temporary). However,<br />Schuitema alluded to Cde Button that he (Schuitema) would vote for Avis Rens<br />if circumstances were different, as he regards her as a very competent<br />Councillor. At this juncture, Cde Schuitema apologised to Councilor-elect<br />Jabavu, being the present Candidate for the same Ward 5. He added though,<br />that he was unable to support Rens as an ANC member.<br /><br />He further informed Cde Button that the choice to do whatever was his<br />to make. Button told the committee that Cde Schuitema nevertheless told him<br />to canvass "privately" for the Democratic Alliance, as the ANC would not<br />know about it. Cde Schuitema did not deny this statement and in defence,<br />intimated to the committee that he made these remarks in "passing" ("by the<br />way"), to Cde Button at his house, and was not in a formal situation.<br /><br />I was left with no other alternative as the Chairperson of our Local<br />branch, to admonish Cde Schuitema's conduct as a leader. Our humble opinion<br />is that Cde Schuitema, being an experienced cadre and leader of our<br />movement, should have provided political direction to the politically<br />immature Cde Button to eradicate any possible doubts in this regard,<br />especially realizing that the stakes were high. I have conveyed this<br />sentiment to Cde Schuitema in no uncertain terms. It needs to be accepted<br />that he accepted this admonishment in a very humble manner.<br /><br />In conclusion we appealed to both of them to find each other and<br />continue to work together as a united force as members of our movement. We<br />further appealed to them to give their support and to have confidence in<br />Councillor-elect Jabavu as the legitimate, nominated candidate for the ANC<br />in Ward 5.<br /><br />Recommendations:<br /><br />1.. Cde Schuitema should be called to order as a matter of urgency by the<br />ANC Disciplinary Committee<br />2.. The Quigney CPF is huge and vibrant. He appraoched a few very<br />influential DA members to serve on the CPF Exco. Although the CPF is<br />apolitical, this forum could become an opposition to the ANC. The ANC should<br />be driving all Forums/projects where possible to ensure service delivery to<br />our communities.<br />3.. Political education workshops of ANC policies and procedures for our<br />45 branches should be ongoing throughout the year.<br />4.. A vigorous campaign should be launched on the entire Quigney Area by<br />all ANC members, (including MPL's and MP's), in order to restore the<br />confidence of the people in the ANC.<br /><br />I sincerely trust that this report will shed light on the matter<br />between Comrades Schuitema and Button.<br /><br />Yours Comradely,<br /><br />Roy Young (Chairperson Mediator)<br /><br />This "report" reached me more than a month later, literally through the<br />gutter press. It came in an opened envelope that was finally handed by Bobby<br />Button to Dai Williams to hand to me on the 28th March 2006. So despite its<br />serious implications, Roy Young made no attempt to present a draft of the<br />report for confirmation among at the very least in a top five meeting of the<br />ANC Branch Executive Meeting, but sent it to all concerned to eventually<br />reach this bully Chief Whip of the ANC in the Buffalo City Council, Mr.<br />Sonny du. Plessis. When Roy Young was questioned on this irregular practice<br />he said that I was afforded an opportunity for rebuttal or corrections<br />before it ended up in the hands of the higher up authorities. However, there<br />was no opportunity for either me or any one else whose names are mentioned<br />as having "attended" the "hearing", robbing us of the opportunity to<br />question Roy Young's highly questionable credentials for this "hearing", its<br />veracity and obviously prejudicial nature reflecting not simply his own<br />opinion, but a hidden motif.<br /><br />On the 28th of March I replied to Roy Young reminding him that the<br />meeting was held in public with passersby peering in, and that I was in no<br />position, nor had any desire to tell the meeting anything else than I had<br />conveyed to him shortly prior the meeting. I was prepared for a hearing, but<br />not in the form of a kangaroo court he then opted for. The issue was the<br />behaviour of Jabavu who was using Button as his "private canvasser",<br />sidelining the local Quigney ANC members in the process. There was also huge<br />dissatisfaction with the manner in which Jabavu was nominated as against<br />Tembakazi Tuku, which is a burning issue of dissatisfaction in the Quigney.<br />In my letter the bottom line was that this "report' of his amounted to a<br />highly prejudiced opinion and nothing else. There was no register taken of<br />the proceedings, no terms of reference, in fact as it was held even<br />pedestrian passersby were privy to the proceedings.<br /><br />Symptomatic of Roy Young's leadership of the ANC Branch, meetings are<br />scarce and when held the minutes and records of proceedings are even<br />scarcer. Long after this report of his was written and distributed to the<br />leadership in the entire region, it finally came up for discussion in a<br />branch meeting which of which there is no record of proceedings. A Task Team<br />was set up to investigate my "issue" but never met. An issue "arising from<br />the minutes of the Branch Executive Committee (5th April 2005) made<br />reference to the concerns expressed by the Quigney members present regarding<br />the irregular process of the AGM at which Councillor Jabavu was nominated.<br />By then the "Schuitema issue" had fallen off the radar as, in the words, of<br />the Chairperson Young, the matter "had gone stale", and in the light of my<br />own letter of response it was decided to leave things at that.<br /><br />But laced in between continuing activities of Jabavu directed against<br />me personally and the QCPF, came a surprise revisit of this so-called<br />"report" of Mr. Roy Young. At an impromptu called ANC Branch Executive<br />Meeting some two weeks ago, we found a number of top ANC PR Councilors<br />present, including the Chief Whip in the Buffalo City Council, Mr. Sonny du<br />Plessis. This meeting was about the problems being experienced with<br />Councillor Jabavu in the Ward, with regard to a letter of support required<br />of him by the Buffalo City Development Agency, for a Bicycle Project of the<br />QCPF. The meeting was not going well and Roy Young was losing control and<br />allowing du Plessis to dominate proceedings. This hit a stalemate when<br />Councillor Young denounced me, saying that I should have been "suspended<br />long ago". He also admonished the members of the Executive Committee for<br />referring to me as "comrade". This came out of the blue and had me<br />thunderstruck and in shock. Amongst other things, he referred to the<br />"report" of Roy Young.<br /><br />Even though I made the intervention and told the meeting that du<br />Plessis was making bland and cruel statements based on pure allegation and<br />an untested opinion expressed on paper by Roy Young, neither he nor Young<br />were in any way perturbed about what was said, and refused to have the<br />remarks retracted and apologised for. I was furious and felt bitterly<br />betrayed. In effect I was being told that there was already a consensus that<br />I did not belong in the ANC, let alone earn the epitaph of "comrade", out of<br />respect for the many years of dedicated work in the liberation struggle and<br />a matter of honor. Indeed, the word "comrade" as used by the ANC got a<br />bitter taste in an instant as it had been turned into a social construct, an<br />organizational chauvinism, a fetish, a collective lie. It all also is<br />self-evident to anyone reading either the Pony Express written by Brian<br />Botha, or what is being written here.<br /><br />That night, after this ultimate insult, only matched a few times in<br />similar instances of having a run in with the collective lies of the ANC,<br />trying to keep a sound mind as the worst memories of betrayal and insults<br />came mind, I sought walls to touch, find reference points to justify a<br />selfless dedication to struggle of some forty years, I gave Roy Young a call<br />and told him that I was renouncing my membership of the ANC. As he seemed<br />entirely unaware of the insult and humiliation I had suffered, I was<br />emphatic about this and took him to task for not defending me at the meeting<br />he was supposed to chair, against the vicious labeling by the Chief Whip,<br />Mr. Sonny du Plessis. He said nothing. No response, not even asking whether<br />I could let him have my "renunciation" in writing. But what he did do,<br />likewise as he did with his impromptu and highly irregular "report" earlier<br />on, was to convey this message to all and sundry, including the REC<br />leadership. Remarkably, given the serious implications of the attacks coming<br />from Roy Young and Mr. Sonny du Plessis, I had to take it for granted that<br />they were not merely acting with the endorsement of the mainstream<br />leadership, but actually these attacks are being managed from higher up.<br /><br />When I vented my anger over the phone to Roy Young, there was nothing,<br />no word of response, it was almost asif what he was hearing was what he<br />wished to hear. There was no attempt at an explanation, no attempt to cool<br />things. No attempt at an apology. In a later discussion with Ursula Crisp he<br />confirmed that when I told him this, he replied that "I had no alternative"<br />but to convey my outburst to everyone up the line to the Regional ANC<br />leadership. As this news reached me through various channels, and after more<br />slanders, insults and devious actions thrown into my path, I could only<br />contemplate the reality that there was a perception in the mainstream<br />leadership that my being an active member in the ANC from the beginning on<br />was misplaced and unwelcome. Given the history of which everyone is well<br />aware of, of my connections with Oliver Tambo, I found it inconceivable that<br />via the chain of noises from Roy Young there could not even be a whimper of<br />concern.<br /><br />That I was angry stands to reason. That I was shocked is testified by<br />the fact that the next day I had a severe bout of amnesia. An otherwise cool<br />carbuncle was lanced and it spewed volcanic words. I felt insulted to the<br />core and any form of anger management would only have been band aid as I<br />knew, in my heart, that I have come to the end of the road and that finally,<br />at the age of 66 I rid myself of the bars of lies that have kept me crippled<br />politically and emotionally with a memory in a dark and fading past.<br /><br />3.. CULMINATING CYCLE OF ANC DENUNCIATIONS<br /><br />This unhappy situation in the ANC East London Branch Ward 5 completes a<br />cycle of events in which I find myself being renounced and trodden down with<br />obvious force beyond the hammer so to speak. In this instance Jabavu is the<br />hammer, du Plessis the fist and the body of the lot belong to a certain<br />faction in the ANC regional leadership. At the crest of each setback is an<br />up curve where I have took matters in hand and trusted that at some time the<br />favorable and honourable in the ANC mainstream leadership would take a hand<br />and help me out of this interminable winding, indeed this hole in which I<br />seem to be digging myself deeper into because after each resurrection after<br />a downfall I keep trusting but then nothing happens.<br /><br />Having said this it is also difficult for me to say when and where the<br />main crest of these cycles appeared. I could point back to a series of<br />articles that appeared in a Dutch Newspaper in June 1976, each article<br />promising that in the next the "proof" would be revealed that I was working<br />as an Apartheid Spy, but each in turn failed to reveal anything until the<br />series ended after the fifth weekly one pager ended and nothing was said<br />except that my proven integrity in the struggle was ripped to pieces. Then<br />again, four years later, my name landed on the front page of the Sunday<br />Times blatantly declaring "Another Spy Confesses" - a complete falsification<br />of fact that even had Craig Williamson protesting my innocence.<br /><br />But for convenience sake in dealing with matters in the most<br />appropriate manner, let me unpack a denunciation that came from the ANC in<br />May 1981 by a combination of ANC leaders, including Thabo Mbeki who at that<br />time was a humble "ANC Official" just emerging from the cotton wool of a<br />British University.<br /><br />I was deported from Zimbabwe in May 1981, after taking refuge soon<br />after my release from detention in South Africa in January 1980. There were<br />a number of journalists around being primed by various instances, and of<br />course my being deported from Zimbabwe back to South Africa made the news in<br />all South African and Zimbabwean (then still Rhodesian) newspapers. One<br />article in particular can be singled out for enlightening the current<br />predicament with regard to my still being an awful memory from a dark and<br />forgotten past in the archives of the ANC. It appeared in the Salisbury<br />Herald, titled "ANC rejects man's claim to be agent", that appeared on the<br />1st of May 1981. The journalist who wrote the story was Mike Overmeyer. I<br />was in jail in Salisbury Remand C Max for a number of weeks preceding the<br />deportation so there was no contact with Mike when he was busy doing the<br />rounds among his informants putting the story together. It is quite possible<br />though that he interviewed me before hand as earlier on, while I was still<br />free on the streets in Salisbury and under the protection of the Minister of<br />State in the Prime Minister's Office, Emerson Mnungagwa, there was an<br />article that appeared in one of the Sunday Newspapers concerning my<br />connections and solidarity with the Bobby Sands Hunger Strikers in the<br />notorious H-Blocks of British-occupied Northern Ireland. That story also<br />spoke of my involvement with Okhela, but mentioned no facts other than my<br />connections with the Irish Republic Socialist Party in Ireland.<br /><br />But it is quite possible, inconceivable had the journalist not been<br />aware of or pursued the question around my involvement in South Africa in<br />the previous years. Certainly the name of Breyten Breytenbach would have<br />come up, and as certain my having been inside South Africa incognito on two<br />separate missions in 1974 and 1975 respectively. The story speaks of<br />"Schuitema who is now in Zimbabwe", but the truth is I was on my way out in<br />chains to be dumped at Beit Bridge and handed over to the South African<br />authorities when the article appeared. It may well have been that the story<br />itself was cause for my expulsion from Zimbabwe given the awkward first<br />serenades of the ANC to establish a base in the newly independent Zimbabwe.<br />At the time Emerson Mnungagwa had Louise Stack, also with Okhela, as part of<br />his entourage for going out to rallies, and attending selective meetings. At<br />one of these meetings Thabo Mbeki was present. The report that I got from<br />Louise was not too rosy and it was clear that the past tension around<br />international alignments was far from resolved. No doubt Mbeki was enraged<br />by being confronted by someone at a meeting of that nature openly<br />identifying as a member of the highly contentious Okhela.<br /><br />In the article it was therefore understandable that Mbeki, plus a<br />number of other ANC spokespersons from London and Lusaka, would lay it on<br />thick to demolish the Okhela "myth" once and for all. I was shunned and it<br />was made clear never to have been a member of, let alone a member of a<br />"white wing" of the ANC. However, even this would have been too kind a thing<br />to say as not being a member of the ANC during that year was nothing<br />unusual, as since the Morogoro Conference held in 1969 white members of the<br />SACP could be ANC members, but until 1985 were not allowed to serve in<br />leadership positions. So I was set beyond this pale altogether and the bland<br />statement was that I was "never worked as an agent for the ANC", meaning I<br />was never an ANC spy.<br /><br />Again - the mythologizing, Berend "spy", Berend the "agent", Berend<br />this and that - in the meantime Berend was working for nobody but motivated<br />as an activist, a militant, a revolutionary or an anarchist, take your<br />choice. Once you put the "spy" or "agent" connotation to the story at once<br />the human content, motivation, relevance to context and context itself is<br />cannibalized.<br /><br />Whatever the case, I never spoke of myself as a "member of the MK". At<br />that time to me the very existence of "MK" was a rumor and nothing more. We<br />always spoke of the "camps". So if I had spoken about anything remotely<br />constructible as "agent", or "member of MK", the most I would have said was<br />that I went underground in 1974 and 1975 as part of the Okhela plan, and<br />this had the blessing of at least a few leaders of the ANC who were in the<br />know.<br /><br />However, it was the involvement of these ANC leaders who had a hand in<br />establishing Okhela that became a more and more rancorous issue over the<br />years. That Tambo himself had played a major role in setting up Okhela was a<br />burning hot issue and was never confirmed, let alone accepted by the ANC as<br />a whole. This division in the ANC at the time was severe and the wounds left<br />gangrenous patches that had to be surgically removed. And what was<br />considered ultimate rot was the existence of a group called Okhela that was<br />operating for a number of years under the radar of contention. So while the<br />existence of Okhela was never denied, the denial that it had any connection<br />to the ANC was denied with surgical precision.<br /><br />Indeed, a critical question. Okhela was never set up as a "white wing".<br />In fact, it was supposed to have been nameless and totally discrete.<br />Makatini defined Okhela as "an invisible support group for armed struggle".<br />This made total sense. Whites living in a white environment could do things<br />as whites in the confines of their own environment. This could mean<br />anything - for example taking from the Curiel / FLN solidarity between<br />French metropolitan citizens it could mean carrying a briefcase from point a<br />to point be, have a safe house for militants on the run, etc, etc. It would<br />also have meant garnering ideological information such as, for example,<br />locating a verligte professor who was prepared to give spins to information<br />or pass on information for the ANC.<br /><br />Connie Braam protested that the very idea of organizing white support<br />in a clandestine and discrete way was another form of Apartheid. I think she<br />even says as much in her half biography "Bokslagter".<br /><br />So, indeed for outsiders, especially looking over the distance of time<br />where we have grown cold on even the relevance of the question then, very<br />confusing. If the ANC and MK were vibrant living movements then these<br />questions would never have become issues. Why, for example, compromise a<br />white student who could pass on a passport to some one else, by linking him<br />as a member of the organization?<br /><br />At another level of course the idea of a "white wing" implies much more<br />than simply a coincidental or an intelligence-type arrangement. It implies<br />a political structure that is organized in parallel to the main structure.<br />Thus the ANC has a "youth wing", i.e. ANC Youth Leagues, "women's wing", i.e<br />ANC Women's League. Also prior to 1969, Morogoro, there was an a "Congress<br />Alliance", namely a Congress of Democrats ("white wing"), the Natal Indian<br />Congress, ("Indian wing"), etcetera - these wings were done away with by the<br />Morogoro Conference 1969.<br /><br />A good reading of the Tambo Biography will clarity a lot for you.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-48098642590038046352015-03-29T05:00:00.001-07:002015-03-29T21:26:25.181-07:00Thabo Mbeki disses Schuitema<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Robert Mugabe</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">ANC REJECTS MAN'S CLAIM TO BE "AGENT"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">The Herald, Salisbury</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">May 1st 1981</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">BY Mike Overmeyer</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">THE African National Congress of south Africa has strongly denied</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">claims by an alleged former South African spy, Mr. Barend Schuitema, who is</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">now in Zimbabwe, that he worked as an agent for them.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Spokesmen for the ANC in London and Lusaka this week also denied claims</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">that an organization, Okhela, which Mr., Schuitema founded, had any links</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">with the South African resistance movement.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Schuitema claimed in a Sunday Mail report this week that after training</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">in Algeria and visiting Northern Ireland, he slipped back into South Africa</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">and began carrying out intelligence work for Umkhonto we Ziswe, the ANC</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">military wing.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">An ANC official, Mr.,. Thabo Mbeki said from Lusaka: "Schuitema is not</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">and never has been a member or operative of the ANC." The party never had a</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">:"white wing or any other wing for that matter."</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"To the best of our knowledge he is a South African national resident</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">in South Africa, having sought and gained permission from the Apartheid</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">regime to return from Europe in 1979.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Detention</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"After detention for some time, he was released and allowed to settle</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">in Johannesburg without any charges being preferred against him and, as far</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">as we know, without any restrictions being placed on him.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"Why he must seek political asylum in Zimbabwe after having been</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">pardoned by Pretoria for whatever he might have done, is beyond our</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">comprehension", Mr. Mbeki said.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Mr. Schuitema has set up the "Zimbabwe H Block/Armagh Committee to</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">campaign for the political status for jailed IRA guerillas".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">The London-based ANC spokesmen said: "he is someone who returned openly</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">to South Africa after working with the Anti Apartheid Movement in Holland.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">It is absolute nonsense that he went back under the guidance of the ANC</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">leadership".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Schuitema, who was named ads a co-conspirator with the jailed Afrikaner</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">poet Breyten Breytenbach in his 1975 Terrorism Act trial, slipped into</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Zimbabwe in August last year.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">The one-time Klerksdorp miner who became a leading member of the Dutch</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Anti Apartheid Movement in the late 1960's, returned to South Africa on</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">October 7th 1979 and spent 100 days in detention. In February 1980, South</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">African Security Police said Schuitema had been an informer since 1978 and</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">had been paid "several thousand rands" for information.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Hotly Denied</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Mr. Schuitema hotly denied the charge at the time, saying police merely</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">wanted to discredit him.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">During Breytenbach's first trial in 1975 Schuitema had formed an</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">organization calling itself Okhela together with Mr. Morton, a Methodist</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">priest now in the United States.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">In an interview in Salisbury this week, Schuitema claimed that Okhela</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">was the white wing of the African National Congress of South Africa.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">But the ANC spokesman in London said yesterday "the ANC never had a</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">white, coloured or Zulu wing. It has always been one ANC".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">In Breytenbach's second trial in mid-1977 on charges of planning top</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">escape from prison, the judge found that Okhela could not said to exist in</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">the legal sense.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">According to one South African Press report Schuitema tried in 1979 to</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">arrange his return to South Africa through the office of an Afrikaans Sunday</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">newspaper in London. He is said to have proposed that he be jailed in</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">exchange for poet Breytenbach's freedom. The Sunday newspaper is reported</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">not to have taken up his plea.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Schuitema said in an interview with the Herald, "I admit having played</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">a role in Breyten's arrest. It was very unfortunate.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">I fell into that trap since I was not in prison while my comrade was in</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">isolation. I was disgusted".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"Today I do not have political asylum in Zimbabwe. I have a residence</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">permit which expires in September.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"When I first came I saw the Minister of State, Comrade Mnungagwa. He</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">saw how tired I was".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"The background to this is my problem with the people in London It was</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">a smear against me by the South African Communist Party. It was also a party</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">tactic of theirs to eliminate Okhela as an organization.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"Since 1975 things became very difficult for us outside South Africa.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">At that time we had been dealing with people like Craig Williamson - not</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">knowing who he really was.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"But a clear political calculation was made by a number of comrades</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">that I return to South Africa and stand trial because by 1978 the</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">ideological condition within Okhela had altered very much.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"After my return, when I came back on the streets, the while thing</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">smoldered even more. I was detained for 100 days, but never stood trial", he</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">said.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">He claimed to have gone underground as a combatant with the "blessing</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">of certain ANC leaders".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">He denied having received bribes of "thousands of rand" from police for</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">information.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Money was pumped into the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement by the then</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">South African security police. All of us used that money - not only me".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">"The police told me to the face they would get me and murder me", he</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">said. About Breytenbach's arrest, he said: "We made mistakes".</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">The ANC spokesperson in London said: "We cannot make decisions for the</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">Zimbabwe Government".</span><br />
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Head of the Security Branch<br />
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See also:<br />
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1909805519528272594#editor/target=post;postID=6188815290165780703;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=88;src=postname</div>
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ANOTHER SPY CONFESSES</div>
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Sub-title: Why I switched sides - by Berend Schuitema<br />
(Front page, headline story, February 3rd 1980)<br />
BY- Neil Hooper<br />
<br />
BEREND Schuitema, cofounder with Afrikaner poet Breyten Breytenbach of<br />
the anti-South African underground Okhela movement, this week confessed that<br />
he was a security police informer.<br />
<br />
This is the second shock to the anti-South African organizations within<br />
weeks and follows closely on the news of the successful infiltration of a<br />
South African spy, Captain Craig Williamson, into the Geneva-based<br />
International University Exchange Fund.<br />
<br />
Links<br />
<br />
He had close links with the International University Exchange Fund<br />
(IUEF), the organization which was infiltrated by the South African spy,<br />
Craig Williamson.<br />
<br />
Until 1975 he also had close links with the banned South African<br />
Communist Party and the African National Congress.<br />
<br />
The 39 year old founder and former secretary of the Dutch Anti<br />
Apartheid Movement slipped out of South Africa in 1975 when the Security<br />
Branch pounced on Breytenbach, who was later sentenced to nine years<br />
imprisonment on charges under the Terrorism Act.<br />
<br />
Both had secretly entered the country to implement the aims of the<br />
Okhela movement - the "white wing" of the African National Congress - which<br />
included "the liberation of the territory of South Africa and the seizing<br />
of power by the liberation movements representing the people of South<br />
Africa".<br />
<br />
Detained<br />
<br />
Mr. Schuitema returned to South Africa voluntarily on October 7th last<br />
year and was immediately detained by the Security Branch.<br />
<br />
He was released unconditionally after being held for 100 days after the<br />
Attorney General of the Transvaal had declined to bring any charges against<br />
him.<br />
<br />
Anti Apartheid sources in London claim that as soon as Breytenbach was<br />
detained in 1975 the word went out that that Mr. Schuitema was to be<br />
treated as an "agent provocateur" and should not be trusted, but isolated.<br />
<br />
However, this week Schuitema denied that he had been behind the arrest<br />
of the Afrikaner author. "I admit that I passed on information to the South<br />
African. But that was only from 1978 onwards," he said.<br />
<br />
He also denied that he had received any payment for the information<br />
that he had passed on.<br />
<br />
Security branch sources maintain, however, that Mr. Schuitema was a<br />
paid several thousand rands.<br />
<br />
Mr. Schuitema declined to say what sort of information he had passed<br />
on.<br />
<br />
"It was that information that came to them via my lawyer".<br />
<br />
Mr. Schuitema, who went overseas to live in voluntary exile 10 years<br />
ago, said that he had progressively become more and more disenchanted with<br />
the Left, and in particular with Communism since 1975, and this had<br />
ultimately led to a desire to return to South Africa and his acting as a<br />
police informer.<br />
<br />
"I abandoned the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement. I was basically alone<br />
when Breytenbach went. I was driven by fear. Holland was a very messy place<br />
when I left."<br />
<br />
Mr. Schuitema said he had been "politically shattered" by two events.<br />
They were the written offer in 1977 from Breytenbach to the Commissioner of<br />
Police, General Geldenhuys, to act as a spy for South Africa in exchange for<br />
his release from prison, and the assassination of Henri Curiel the next<br />
year.<br />
<br />
"I decided to come back. I knew that I had to be politically<br />
responsible for that letter (to General Geldenhuys). I announced my<br />
intention of coming back in Paris in 1978 by getting one of my lawyers in<br />
Europe, Mr. Vellema, to tell the South African Embassy in The Hague that I<br />
was prepared to come back".<br />
<br />
It was then, too, that he started passing on information to the South<br />
African Police.<br />
<br />
"I took them by surprise. I was in trouble and wanted to come back<br />
home. I asked my lawyer to start sending information I gave him. This was<br />
long before I met Craig Williamson.<br />
<br />
"I did also pass on information to the IUEF, but I did not know that<br />
Craig Williamson was working for South Africa. I didn't get money for<br />
information passed on to the police, but I did get money from Craig".<br />
<br />
Mr. Schuitema said that after the death of Henri Curiel he then ended<br />
up as an illegal immigrant in America, and in October last year he decided<br />
to return to South Africa. He had informed the police that he was coming and<br />
had been detained upon his return.<br />
<br />
"I chose to come back to South Africa for personal and emotional<br />
reasons".<br />
<br />
Asked what his politics are now, he said he was "a nationalist in the<br />
red sense".<br />
<br />
The ideology of the international communist movement was bankrupt and<br />
the conflict of the 1980s would be between the Eastern and Western Worlds".<br />
<br />
In South Africa he believes that the children of Soweto could be<br />
politically controlled and that there could be a solution to South Africa's<br />
political problems.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-19301217491649868572015-03-29T04:36:00.001-07:002015-03-29T04:36:33.980-07:00The Shadows of the Past<div class="msg-content undoreset" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427627785846_2064" style="background-color: white; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px; margin: 0px; overflow-x: auto; padding: 10px; position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;">
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Writing a foreword for the first major biography on Oliver Tambo, the<br />predecessor to Nelson Mandela as President of the ANC, the State President,<br />Thabo Mbeki, comments that the author, Luli Callinicos, "timely and<br />well-researched begins the process of reducing the yawning deficit caused by<br />the unintended consignment of the memory of Oliver Tambo to the dark shadows<br />of a forgotten history." Whether this pays homage to the skill and<br />dedication in which Luli devoted to enlightening the public of South Africa<br />about our "forgotten hero", OR Tambo in many ways is a matter for<br />conjecture. One cannot escape the perception that the many people who were<br />in the ambit of Tambo as leader of the ANC would share this view. Better<br />less is said than more and what Luli Callinicos writes merely lifts the veil<br />rather than uncovers the deep malaise of the ANC during the entire exile<br />period.<br /><br />This in itself is an ungenerous comment to kick in from the sidelines<br />by one whose mission should be to elucidate the man, Oliver Tambo, in order<br />to cast light on one of the really thorny matters languishing in the "dark<br />shadows of a forgotten past". For about this matter, more generally speaking<br />the role of whites in the struggle against Apartheid South Africa, more<br />specifically about a group in which Tambo had vested great hopes, very<br />little has been said to the date of appearance of Luli Calinicos' book. I am<br />referring to the so-called "white wing" of the ANC which was exposed by the<br />arrest of Breyten Breytenbach in the South African winter of 1975.<br />Officially, from the ANC perspective, there never was such a "white wing" of<br />the ANC. All connection with the group Okhela was vehemently denied from the<br />outset of Breytenbach's spectacular show trial in 1975, and even five years<br />later any manifestation of any activist even remotely connected to Okhela<br />was in for a dossing under the black veil of denial.<br /><br />In 1981 there was an embarrassing intervention in the press in newly<br />independent Zimbabwe. Louise Stack and myself had thought to escape the fury<br />of spy allegations in South Africa after my release from detention in<br />January 1980 and found willing hosts with ZANU-PF, then getting into the<br />saddle as government of the day. At about the same time the ANC was putting<br />out feelers to make amends with ZANU, given their firm and longstanding<br />alliance with ZAPU, which had come to be sidelined prior to and after the<br />first democratic elections in then still Rebel Rhodesia and after elections<br />free and independent Zimbabwe.<br /><br />I was kept much in the background while in Zimbabwe, but Louise was<br />hosted freely and, amongst other meetings she regularly held with ZANU<br />Ministers and Officials, was one at which Thabo Mbeki was present. This<br />meeting was one of the first sensitive kick starts to the ANC'<br />reconciliation with ZANU and many of the narratives that came our way from<br />Emerson Mnungagwa, the first Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office<br />charged with state security, were gleeful reports on how the ANC was coming<br />cap in hand for favors with the new ZANU government. One such story related<br />to Mnungagwa's having to fly to Luanda to meet an ANC delegation. For<br />whatever reason, he returned not having met with the ANC at all.<br /><br />These were trying times for the ANC indeed. ZAPU had belonged to the<br />Southern Africa movements aligned more to Moscow than Peking. ZANU, as well<br />as the South African PAC, were in the Peking camp. It was during the brief<br />sojourn of 18 months in Zimbabwe that the North Korean trained 5th Brigade<br />was sent in to Bulawayo for a massacre of ZAPU. This could not have gone<br />unnoticed with the ANC as it then had to sit cap in hand and deal with the<br />butchers of their former ally.<br /><br />So there was much tension in the air. Salisbury at the time was a wasp<br />nest of spies. Wherever one looked spies were all around and visible by<br />their manners as journalists of a special type who would not hesitate to<br />come onto us with the most forthright questions. Reports were coming onto<br />the desk of Mnungagwa daily, each time a different and more dramatic tale<br />that while I was a government guest in Salisbury (Salisbury took a longish<br />time to rename "Harare") I was spotted counting railway trucks crossing the<br />Zimbabwe- Botswana frontier. Another report had it that overnight I was seen<br />in Pretoria while I was supposed to be under the watchful eye of my<br />Zimbabwean hosts.<br /><br />Things got out of hand when it was reported to Mnungagwa that there was<br />a plot in ZAPU to assassinate me - I was then given an exit permit from<br />Zimbabwe and left for Europe. After a few months I was terribly homesick,<br />probably mentally ill and found myself roaming streets not knowing where I<br />was. I seemed to have lost my mind and sometimes lost hours in a day not<br />knowing what I did, where I was. I made a desperate appeal through Louise to<br />be allowed back to Zimbabwe - the request was positive and after much<br />difficulties in using an exit permit in a reverse direction I entered the<br />liberated territory once more.<br /><br />But things had gotten worse and more treacherous during my absence.<br />Real world politics was kicking in. Somehow the ANC was embedding itself<br />given the fact that it "has history on its side" (a phrase attributable to<br />Ben Turok). While the PAC and ZANU were ideological bedfellows, the PAC was<br />no serious option for playing the cards at the tables of liberation<br />movements akin the ANC. So after a few weeks Louise and I were detained,<br />thrown into maximum security prisons, and after three weeks released. And<br />then the lousy spies did the salting of raw wounds in newspaper articles<br />which once more added to the devastations of January 1980, when I was<br />branded a spy not only in the South African press, frontlines of the Sunday<br />Times, but international press as well.<br /><br />But here is salt for the wounds - verbatim an article that appeared in<br />the Herald, Salisbury 1st of May 1981"<br /><br />Heading: ANC Rejects man's claim to be "agent" - by Mike Overmeyer<br /><br />The African National Congress of South Africa<br /><br />(Next input - transcribe the article)<br /><br />------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br />On the level this verdict of our State President Thabo Mbeki does not<br />come across as either genuine or convincing. For even if it were true that<br />there are the "dark shadows of a forgotten history" then, given the gravity<br />of the matter in relation to the heavy and bold statements made on the scale<br />and nature of the struggle against Apartheid, the statement he makes can<br />only be bait for unraveling this verdict leaving nothing intact of the<br />narrative of exile during the entire period until Tambo fell in the shadow<br />of Nelson Mandela and there was no need any more to feel sucked in by the<br />dark facts of the past.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-28901858823257291792015-03-29T03:20:00.000-07:002015-10-21T08:13:03.111-07:00British Special Branch infiltrated Anti-Apartheid Movement<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="text-align: center;">The extent of Special Branch surveillance of the Anti-Apartheid Movement is revealed today in newly released documents. They show how Special Branch penetrated the movement from top to bottom, infiltrating meetings, recruiting informers and obtaining documents.</span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.25px; text-align: center;"><br /></span>Officers snooped on leaders including MPs, two of whom are now Labour ministers. Police spies slipped into meetings of local groups which were attended by as few as five genuine campaigners.</h2>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.25px; text-align: center;">Even the most innocuous activity was investigated and assessed. At one point, officers sent a report to the Security Service, MI5, about a supermarket worker who had been handing out leaflets to colleagues. At another, the branch investigated a suburban shed which contained a suspicious number of "political posters with a leftwing bias"</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>infiltrated Anti-Apartheid Movement</b></span><br />
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<span id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_3087" style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a data-rapid_p="55" href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi/images/0,9069,1581230,00.html" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_3088" rel="nofollow" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Read the documents here, part 1</a><br /><a data-rapid_p="56" href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi/images/0,9069,1581236,00.html" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_3086" rel="nofollow" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Read the documents here, part 2</a></span><br />
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<span id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_3085" style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_3084">Rob Evans<br />Tuesday September 27, 2005<br /><a data-rapid_p="57" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_3103" rel="nofollow" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The Guardian</a></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The extent of Special Branch surveillance of the Anti-Apartheid Movement is revealed today in newly released documents. They show how Special Branch penetrated the movement from top to bottom, infiltrating meetings, recruiting informers and obtaining documents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.25px;">Officers snooped on leaders including MPs, two of whom are now Labour ministers. Police spies slipped into meetings of local groups which were attended by as few as five genuine campaigners.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_3079" style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Even the most innocuous activity was investigated and assessed. At one point, officers sent a report to the Security Service, MI5, about a supermarket worker who had been handing out leaflets to colleagues. At another, the branch investigated a suburban shed which contained a suspicious number of "political posters with a leftwing bias".</span></div>
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The reports of the espionage against anti-apartheid campaigners in the 1980s have been released to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act for a Radio Four programme to be broadcast tonight. Special Branch acted as MI5's "eyes and ears", gathering information which was analysed by the Security Service. The Anti-Apartheid Movement was one of a number of political organisations monitored. Special Branch and MI5 argued that the surveillance was justified because such organisations contained dangerous Trotskyists and communists.</div>
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A report from November 1980 describes the minutes of the movement's recent executive committee meeting, which led Special Branch officers to note: "The movement is concerned at the falling interest shown by members and, due to their general lack of success, a number of people appear to be either disinterested or pay lip-service only to the ideals of the movement. An example of this is Peter Hain [now Welsh and Northern Ireland secretary], who has resigned as the chairman of Stop all Racist Tours, an offshoot of the AAM."</div>
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The other member of the current government named in the documents is the sports minister, Richard Caborn. In a detailed report on the organisation's annual conference in 1983, Mr Caborn, along with former Labour minister Frank Dobson, is listed as having been elected to the national committee.</div>
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Special Branch checked each member of the committee and concluded that "13 of the new 30-member executive therefore belong to either the South African Communist party or the Communist Party of Great Britain".</div>
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A report from June 1982 records "information from a delicate source" that activists were going to demonstrate outside the employers' organisation the CBI on the following day. A sergeant in Special Branch reported that "a total of seven people attended the meeting" of the group in Croydon, south London, on May 27 1982. A month later, a "secret and reliable source" gave an account of the monthly meeting in Highgate, north London.</div>
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<h2 alt="Documents show how Special Branch infiltrated Anti-Apartheid Movement" class="fs-14 fw-600 sprint" data-subject="Documents show how Special Branch infiltrated Anti-Apartheid Movement" id="yg-msg-subject" style="background-color: #fafafc; color: #3f3f3f; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 14px; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-969823778477969632015-03-29T02:58:00.002-07:002015-03-29T02:58:24.407-07:00OPERATION VULA - CONNIE BRAAM (Review by Max du Preez)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<img alt="Mac Maharaj" height="640" src="https://sp.yimg.com/ib/th?id=HN.607997864451836009&pid=15.1&w=106&h=105&p=0" width="640" /></div>
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<b id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_1479">OPERATION VULA - CONNIE BRAAM </b>(<a data-rapid_p="16" href="http://www.jacana.co.za/african/non_fiction_more.php?sSearchID=106&sSelArray=" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Jacana</a>, 2004)</div>
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<b id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_1482">maxrespek</b></div>
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<b id="yui_3_15_0_1_1427622523226_1482">Review by Max du Preez</b></div>
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The South African story deserves to be told by more talented writers than historians or political scientists. It needs proper storytellers and keen observers of human behaviour. Like Antjie Krog. And Connie Braam. Especially like Braam - Krog's narrative is often so complex and dense that it becomes hard work to read. Reading a story should never be hard work. And we really need ordinary South Africans to start reading the stories of our past. History is storytelling.</div>
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Braam, for many years the head of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement, is an established Dutch novelist. Her writing is therefore accessible and entertaining; she tells us about moods, emotions, atmosphere and body language rather than only the cold facts. But it also explains why she sometimes writes of a conversation she had years ago by giving us the dialogue in quotation marks. That's mildly annoying, because one knows it is impossible for her to remember the actual words used during that conversation. Such a technique tends to undermine the credibility of her writing - how much else did she make up, cynics would ask.</div>
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But her book about the ANC's Operation Vula in the late 1980s is unpretentious, straightforward and honest. She sticks to what she did and said and heard and avoids the temptation of learned political analysis. On the other hand, non-South Africans with no knowledge of the events and time (1986 to 1990) might want a bit more context.</div>
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The basic story is a fascinating one. Braam recruited sympathetic people from the Netherlands and Belgium to smuggle arms into South Africa or to put up safe houses for the Vula operatives inside the country and in neighbouring states. With the help of make-up artists, hairdressers and actors in Amsterdam she also devised elaborate disguises for Umkontho we Sizwe agents who were to infiltrate the country. They were clearly very successful: well-known leaders like Siphiwe Nyanda, now head of the National Defence Force, Charles Nqakula and Ronnie Kasrils, now members of Thabo Mbeki's cabinet, Max Ozinsky and Mac Maharaj operated inside the country for long periods without being detected.</div>
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It was important for South Africans to be reminded now that foreigners did play a role in our liberation struggle. Hundreds of anti-apartheid activists from especially Holland but also Belgium, Britain and elsewhere risked their lives and jobs to contribute to the fight for democracy in South Africa. We should always remember that.</div>
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Braam's book is primarily the story of the Dutch activists. But it also has a number of wonderful stories of the Vula operatives involved. Braam interviewed some of them about their past and their experiences in MK while they were visiting Amsterdam to have disguises planned for them, and records these stories in the book. The remarkable story of MK soldier Christopher Tsie Manye, aka Little John, is an example. When are we going to see the books by the Little Johns and other soldiers of the struggle? I think it is important for South Africans to know more of and understand the lives and experiences of the guerrillas who fought the apartheid governments for so long.</div>
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In fact, isn't it time a South African publisher pushed Mac Maharaj into writing his memoirs? Maharaj was one of the top men of Operation Vula and for years in the heart of the ANC's intelligence community. Reading Braam's book made me feel sad about the way this highly intelligent and articulate man fell from grace after his accusations against Scorpion boss Bulelani Ngcuka.</div>
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Braam also tells the touching story of her personal relationship with Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, the MK commander who was later kidnapped by the South African Security Forces in Swaziland and jailed on Robben Island. He was released only after the negotiations between the ANC and the National Party government started in 1990. Ebrahim is a senior government adviser today, but Braam doesn't tell us if or when the relationship ended.</div>
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Why was the Dutch anti-apartheid movement the most active and effective and why did so many Dutch people risk their lives during Operation Vula? I think it is partly because of the political culture of the Netherlands, or rather of that great city Amsterdam. But it is also because it was the Dutch who first colonised the indigenous people of the southern tip of Africa, and because the ruling ethnic group until 1994 spoke a language originally derived from Dutch. (It has long been an irritation to Dutch progressives that the only Dutch word known throughout the world is "apartheid" - oh, and that Hendrik Verwoerd was born in Holland.) Braam also talks of the "historical ties" between the Netherlands and South Africa.</div>
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It was for this reason that I organised the first sanctioned breaking of the cultural boycott when I was editor of <i>Vrye Weekblad</i>: the Dutch/South African "Breaking the Barriers" festival in 1991. It seemed a good idea at the time, but it quickly became clear that progressive Dutch people didn't want to be reminded of their ethnic and language links to the Afrikaners: they were ashamed. They wanted to share their culture with the oppressed black masses of South Africa, but the masses didn't care for Dutch culture because it was too close to Afrikaans culture.</div>
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The deep resentment towards white Afrikaners comes through in Braam's book. It helped me to understand why the Anti-Apartheid Beweging Nederland and its affiliate that helped fund <i>Vrye Weekblad</i>, the Komitee Zuidelijk Afrika, always treated me and my comrades with such suspicion. Even when I was on an (invited) speaking tour of the Dutch platteland as part of their campaign against apartheid I always felt resented and mistrusted. They would have loved it so much if I were black. Reading Braam's book made it easier for me to understand this. (And they could never understand why I as editor of a fiercely anti-apartheid newspaper couldn't be a card-carrying member of the ANC and couldn't do courier jobs for the movement. An activist is an activist, was the feeling.)</div>
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Connie Braam and her comrades did important and brave work during Operation Vula and through the campaigns of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement. A fascinating book.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-61765074662363310172015-03-23T14:49:00.000-07:002015-03-23T14:49:49.942-07:00Remembering Anti-Apartheid Organizer Don Morton<div class="entry-date" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <b>Don Morton</b></span></h2>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Walking With the Angels</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Remembering Anti-Apartheid Organizer Don Morton</span></h1>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">by MIKE MORGAN</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The first time I met Don was at an Indian curry parlor in Brick Lane, London. We each had a plate of Prawn Vindaloo and it was mother-in-law hot. We spent the rest of the evening cooling down on pints of John Courage. The combination of warm beer along with fire-engine red fish curry had a dire effect. But in between refills of the Directors Bitter and trips to the can, Don recruited me to come to America. That was August of 1978. I was twenty-three years of age.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I was then part of a newly formed anti-apartheid organization of white South African War Resisters in the city of London. Don, who lived in Brooklyn, New York, had close ties to the leadership of our group, Terry Shott and Bill Anderson. He was eager to get something similar off the ground in the States. Such an enterprise entailed outreach and publicity à la planting the flag. The idea was that I would come over the Atlantic to help Don, and that we would both embark on a speaking tour across the country, talking about the role of South Africa’s war machine, its backers, and ways to oppose it. My plan was to spend about eight weeks in the U.S. I’m still here. Don could be fairly persuasive.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">By the end of September, 1978 I arrived in New York, and soon thereafter Don and I began the great adventure. Suddenly, I was the character in the Johnny Cash song, “I’ve Been Everywhere”. From palaces like the U.N. to ramshackle churches in Sioux City, Iowa, from the lakefront of Chicago, across the prairies of Nebraska, over the Rocky Mountains, through the deserts of the West to the cities stacked along the Pacific Ocean, down through the bayous of the South, we covered the length and breadth of this country, talking up the cause, all in the space of two months. Woody Guthrie would have been proud of us.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">My limited knowledge of America then revolved around three avenues, books, films and a jigsaw puzzle I had as a kid, where each piece was a different state. So I was very much in Don’s hands. After all, he had arranged the whole affair. I gotta say, Don had a fair amount of people stashed around the country that he knew…renegade priests, dissident professors, Vietnam veterans, workers organizers, black nationalists, Southern African exiles, journalists, feminists, movement lawyers, student activists, a wealthy benefactor or two, the whole gamut. It was an impressive array, a mini-rainbow nation of leftists and supporters of one stripe or another. We were on the telly and the radio (we were interviewed by the author Studs Terkel in Chicago), we held press conferences, we spoke in town halls and on college campuses, at high school assemblies, in union halls, at church bingo sessions, wherever we could get an audience. Remember, this was prior to the age of faxes, texts, emails and the internet. It was a hell of an organizing job and Don pretty much single handedly pulled it off.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">We travelled around in an old four-cylinder Dodge Dart station wagon that had seen better days. The brakes went in Springfield, Massachusetts. We spent three days there mostly in a bowling alley with cheap booze and that’s when Don threw out his back. Finally the old crate died in Montgomery, Alabama. No angel from Montgomery for us. Stuck in Alabama, Don leaned on one of his money people who bailed us out with a Lee Iacocca rental special, a giant boat of car with a name like a Plymouth Behemoth or a Chrysler Man-of-War. We tooled up the eastern seaboard in this state-of-the-art cruiser, stopping off at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina to speak to a student gathering and to catch the second half of a Jimmy Cliff concert at the college union hall. By the beginning of December 1978, we were back in Brooklyn.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I don’t want to dwell on what we were trying to do, but I think the vision deserves a say and a wee tub-thump. I owe this to Don, because he was my primary teacher. We believed that white South Africans had to earn the right to live as equals. The road to humanity lay in us actively refusing to go along with the system of apartheid and all of its impedimenta and by throwing our lot in with the aspirations of the oppressed black majority. Racism in South Africa was a white people’s creation. Therefore whites had a particular responsibility to help undo it. This required more than just repudiating the program and its material benefits, but exploring and enacting ways to undermine it, such as refusing to comply with compulsory army service. The choice might have been clear but it was not without the risks of obvious alienation and punitive retribution from the establishment and its loyalists – either stand with the liberation effort or be condemned to rot on the dung heap of world history, alongside the skeletons and cadavers of good Germans, apologists, opportunists and other assorted bloodsuckers who already littered that stack. The price, though steep, seemed worthwhile, for much was at stake. This was the task confronting whites who called themselves South Africans. We both held this to be true then and, if Don were alive today, we would still both hold it to be true. This position not only applies to South Africa but to any society that is riddled with racism and the inequality of white skin privilege.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Now back to the yarn. Don then went to work on me to stay in America. He didn’t need the rack, the thumbscrews or the lash because, in my own head, I had already signed on. Like Lou Reed sang, “I wanted to play football for the coach.” Thus began the long march, the great trek, the grind and drama of building what we hoped would become an effective deterrent to the forces of darkness. There were too many adventures to explain here, but once on this road, there was no going back. It was a bit like living out an old Eric Ambler political thriller, either “Journey Into Fear” or “Background to Danger,” those late 1930s novels set in pre-war Europe that reeked of peril and intrigue. We worked with communists (real or imaginary), radicals (real or imaginary) and revolutionaries (real or imaginary). We befriended sympathetic journalists, and were courted by phony South African ones who were Bureau of State Security (BOSS) agents. We even had our own organization infiltrated by a South African Police informer, who went public on his return to South Africa. It was high-jinx of the thunder and lightning variety. We made lots of mistakes, but we had some successes and tried to do the right thing. It wasn’t always a bed of roses, but neither was it always a bed of nails. It was the struggle. Above all, we remained a thorn in the side of the regime. In retrospect, I have few regrets.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Don was a heavy hitter and he pulled off some important coups. He originally leaked the Frankfurt documents, the paper trail that exposed illegal secret bank loans to the South African government. This resulted in the formation of a group called ELTSA (End Loans to South Africa), a prominent and influential London based organization back in the day. The founder and main mover and shaker of that outfit (he is now a decorated MBE in the U.K.) has attested to Don’s role in this affair. Don also obtained vital information about illegal fuel shipments through the ports of Mozambique by rail and tanker trucks to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in contravention of the oil embargo, and he supplied the investigative journalists the necessary dope to lay bare this cover-up. These British writers were awarded for this exposé. Both Don and I testified at the United Nations on the role of foreign mercenaries in Rhodesia, Angola and Namibia, fighting to maintain white supremacist rule. That’s when we made some definitely nasty enemies in places like Boulder, Colorado (headquarters of the<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Soldier of Fortune</em> magazine, the mercenary recruitment rag).</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Don also spoke out at the U.N. about South Africa’s covert quest and attainment of nuclear weapons. This kind of work was significant, and it seriously messed with the Boers’ war effort and duplicitous international public relations campaign. Don was a confidant of Breyten Breytenbach, the formerly imprisoned Afrikaner author. In fact, Don and Breyten were in the same clandestine group of white South African rebels named Okhela (the Zulu word for “spark”), which was before my time with him. These were no small feats. He needs to be remembered for them.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The American songwriter Bruce Springsteen once said that in every town and on every block there are angels and there are rotters. Don was one of the angels, in fact a larger than life angel. The side of the street that he walked on was the sunny one, or at least he tried to make it sunny. This too should never be forgotten.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Mike Morgan</strong> served a year in the apartheid military in South Africa, then left and became a founding member of a war resister anti-apartheid group in the USA, SAMRAF, and Brooklynites Against Apartheid. He is a founding editor of </em>Lurch Magazine<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">, and has published extensively on </em>Smokebox.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-82795199033943630372015-02-15T08:05:00.003-08:002015-02-16T06:21:51.175-08:00The Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement in Jan van Ribeeck's Castle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Apartheid exhibition opens at Castle</h1>
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On the 25th anniversary of former president Nelson Mandela’s famous release from incarceration, the Castle of Good Hope and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands opened a photo exhibition honouring various solidarity campaigns borne in the Netherlands. Titled ‘Signs of Solidarity – the Dutch against Apartheid’, its opening saw well known South African anti-Apartheid stalwarts sharing their stories. Renowned struggle veteran and former Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs, poet and theologian Willa Boezak both relayed their experiences of being involved with the Dutch anti-Apartheid resistance in the Netherlands.</div>
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“During that time, when international resistance against Apartheid started, you had countries who were officially in opposition against Apartheid. Countries like New Zealand, the Eastern Bloc, the Scandinavian countries, were all officially against Apartheid because their governments were against it. But other countries did not have official stances against it, one such country was the Netherlands who, for some reason, never officially spoke out against the regime, at least in that time, but on the ground the people were so opposed to Apartheid that eventually the government had to listen.,” Sachs said.</div>
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despite resistance from within their own country, Dutch supporters of the liberation remain, to him, the most determined protestors against the regime.</div>
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“The most passionate, the most dedicated anti-Apartheid solidarity supporters came from the Netherlands. [Unlike New Zealand] they didn’t have a rugby team whose playing with South Africa would tear the nation apart; they didn’t have any direct stakes in South Africa, and I don’t believe it was simply because of the historical ties to South Africa. Officially there were massive amounts of support for Apartheid in the Netherlands, the national socialist ideologies carried over during NAZI occupation were still prevalent in the Kingdom. But the people on the ground were determined to undermine Apartheid and show solidarity.”</div>
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He said eventually the support and tenacity shown by the Dutch would shape the end of Apartheid, products like OutSpan fruits and South African wines would not be allowed to come into the Netherlands due to a national boycott installed by citizens and Dutch businesses.</div>
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Calvyn Gilfellan, the Castle of Good Hope Control Board CEO said there is a great amount of irony in displaying the exhibition at one of the first structures of Dutch South Africa.</div>
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“The venue is a former Dutch fortress. It is viewed by many as a symbol of colonial and racial oppression. This is in direct contrast with the current exhibition that demonstrates the role played by the Dutch to pressurise the Apartheid regime to eventually give in as symbolised by the release of Nelson Mandela on this day’’ he said.</div>
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Dutch ambassador Marisa Gerard, who presented the opening, said years of historical ties, sometimes not savoury, linked South Africa and the Netherlands and sparked the Dutch people’s need to engage with Apartheid.</div>
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“During those years, a strong bond of friendship was forged between our peoples. It might be confusing but it’s quite profound that we can show this exhibition here in the oldest Dutch built building, the Castle, here in Cape Town. The Castle is symbolic of another, more painful part of our common history. The exhibition shows a story of two peoples that found one another in a common struggle for the freedom of South Africans under Apartheid.”</div>
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The exhibition will run at the Castle of Good Hope until the 9thof March, after which it will move to the University of the Western Cape and then the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees. VOC (Andriques Che Petersen)</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-57914762375534790412015-01-03T08:41:00.001-08:002015-02-14T09:34:30.348-08:00Rhodesia Sabotage Plot Revealed 1975<h2 alt="Rhodesia sabotage plot revealed / Guardian, Monday September 25 1978" class="fs-14 fw-600 sprint wrap" data-subject="Rhodesia sabotage plot revealed / Guardian, Monday September 25 1978" id="yg-msg-subject" style="background-color: #fafafc; color: #3f3f3f; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif, Roboto; font-size: 14px; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis;">
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Rhodesia sabotage plot revealed / Guardian, Monday September 25 1978</h2>
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Rhodesia sabotage plot revealed</div>
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David Beresford</div>
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Guardian, Monday September 25 1978</div>
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A quarrel has broken out among South African revolutionaries, which gives some insight into the origins of the present row about Rhodesian sanctions busting by Western oil companies.</div>
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The latest development in the quarrel is the circulation of discussion papers among anti apartheid activists, detailing a project three years ago to blow up the Beit Bridge, the crucial rail and road link spanning the Limpopo River between South Africa and Rhodesia.</div>
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The sabotage attempt and disclosures which led to the present sanctions row, date back to 1973-74 when a group of individuals in the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement exposed two major Rhodesian sanctions-busting operations, one selling large quantities of Rhodesian tobacco in Europe, and the other involving an Amsterdam agency organizing trade between Rhodesia, Western and Communist countries.</div>
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Individuals in the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement responsible for the fairly sophisticated acts of espionage which led to the sanctions-busting exposures were also members of, or connected with, a secret organization called Okhela based in Paris. </div>
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Led by an Afrikaans poet, Breyten Breytenbach, Okhela was a revolutionary action group of white South Africans who claim to be working unofficially under the aegis of South Africas main national liberation organization, the ANC. The ANC, however, has denied Okhelas claim that its people worked with the knowledge and assistance of two members of the ANCs Revolutionary Council, including its President, Mr. Oliver Tambo.</div>
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As a result of their earlier sanctions-busting work, Okhela was introduced in 1975 to a contact whose cover name was Cecil. He gave them access to documents showing that Western oil companies were pouring oil into Rhodesia through South Africa and Mozambique.</div>
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Instead of publishing their findings and relying on Western governments to take action against the companies involved Okhela decided to press ahead with a plot to blow up Beit Bridge.</div>
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According to one plotter involved, the sabotage (codenamed Project Albert) was prepared in Algeria. Okhela sent a Dutch civil engineer to survey the bridge, and work out how it could best be destroyed.</div>
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But the project was repeatedly delayed, allegedly because of political problems within the ANC, and finally abandoned after Okhelas leader, Breytenbach, was captured by the security police while on a secret mission into South Africa during August 1975.</div>
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Breytenbach was tried under the Terrorism Act, confessed, made a groveling apology, and was goaled for nine years. The trial discredited Okhela and the groups links with the ANC were broken.</div>
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Okhela tried to salvage something from Project Albert by publishing the oil documents. They handed them over to the United Church of Christ in America, a body with which one of the members of Okhela had close connections. The church engaged a young British economist, Bernard Rivers who had been conducting his own research into sanctions busting to edit it. The documents were published in a report entitled the Oil Conspiracy.</div>
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The report related mainly to Mobil, but it also compromised the other big oil companies.</div>
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Dr. Rivers, joined by another British economist, Dr. Martin Bailey, continued the fight to expose the oil companies with some effective lobbying, publicity and investigative work. They were helped by Mr. Tiny Rowland, head of Lonrho.</div>
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While the present political storm over oil sanctions, resulting from their efforts, would appear to represent a belated triumph for the original initiative the organization, or what remained of it, is bitter the way the affair developed.</div>
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This is reflected in discussion papers now in circulation which contain angry attacks on the ANC and South African Communist Party, accused of having repeatedly sabotaged Okhela projects.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-19204393981096229792014-12-23T00:49:00.000-08:002015-04-04T06:43:22.649-07:00Review Muskens " History of the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement" <br />
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<img src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t31.0-8/10379905_10152901713604778_8474241471956483258_o.jpg" /></div>
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<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
<h3>
<b style="text-align: center;"><i>Be</i></b><b style="text-align: center;"><i>rend Schuitema with members of the Marshals Corps </i></b><b style="text-align: center;"><i>(Eastern Cape December 2008)</i></b></h3>
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<b><i>ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT</i></b></div>
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<b><i>"Aan het goede kant"</i></b></div>
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<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
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<b><i>ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor</i></b></div>
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<b><i>aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam</i></b></div>
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<b><i>op gezag van de Rector Magnificus</i></b></div>
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<b><i>prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom</i></b></div>
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<b><i>ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie,</i></b></div>
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<b><i>in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel</i></b></div>
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<b><i>op maandag 30 september 2013 te 14.00 uur</i></b></div>
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<b><i>door</i></b></div>
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<b><i>Roeland Willem Anton Muskens</i></b></div>
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<b><i>geboren te Rotterdam</i></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Review Interview: Radio 1, NOS, NTR, Kunststof. Interview Roeland Muskens, by
Petra Possel (07-08-2014) </b></div>
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<br /></div>
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One Dutch word that is understood throughout the world –
Apartheid led to civil protest in the 1960’s but in the course of time became a
national-based mass movement which became gradually more militant. About this
our guest wrote a book, “Aan het goede Kant”. Here is Roeland Muskens. </div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Good evening. Mr. Muskens you wrote a
book on the history of the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement. Let me first ask you:
were you yourself involved with the Anti Apartheid Movement? I recall some time
ago when a billiards competition was held throughout Holland in which money was
being collected for the ANC. You have written a massive book of 700 pages which
will tax readers. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: That is true. The material was so
fascinating that I could not stop writing! </div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: You cover a significant chapter in
Dutch activism spanning a period from 1960 to 1990 intricately involved with
South Africa and allied to the African National Congress. Three decades of a
very significant period from the early 1960’s to the release of Nelson Mandela
from prison. But before we get into the discussion let us first talk about you.
You are a nephew of Bishop Muskens. No!?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: um, um . . . . </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Yes, Bishop Muskens he is your uncle .
. . . . </div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Yes, but I knew him from a whole
other angle. I met him at a conference of returning missionaries from Africa.
And when he appeared people flustered, stick away any bread you may have with
you. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: laughs . . . It does of course rhyme with
your activism. The Catholic moral was that if you were very poor you were
permitted to carry off a loaf of bread from a shop. So were you inspired by
your activism in which you immersed yourself?
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>:
Well, I would not normally befriend a Catholic Bishop, but uncle Tinnie (I
called him uncle) was an exception. He stood on the “Goede Kant”.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: So he passes muster?</div>
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(Interlude, soccer report)</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u> We continue with our talk with Roeland
Muskens), we are talking about the campaign to free Roeland Muskens, the
Boycott Outspan Action with its ghoulish poster of “don not squeeze a black
South African” depicted by a white hand squeezing out an orange, we know about
the actions against Shell, the attacks on the Makro businesses and the burning
down of ISV establishments, etcetera. I have encapsulated the whole history of
the Dutch Anti Apartheids movement in a few sentences, but Roeland Muskens
worked on the subject for seven years and finally produced a 700 page book.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Yes, it became a book weighing a
full kilogram.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: You are a political scientist with a
lot of practical experience in Latin American action groups. What brought you
to write about South Africa?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Well, it is actually quite simple. A
number of people out of the Anti Apartheid Movement approached me to write the
book. The reason for this was that I seemed well qualified, but more
importantly had no nor direct involvement in the movement.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: So you were not involved at all in the
movement itself?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: That is right; I was not involved at
all. But like all people in the Netherlands I was fully aware of the Anti
Apartheid Movement. I attended a few rallies and was also present at the mass
meeting when Nelson Mandela came to Amsterdam for his first visit.<br />
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: So you were an activist. And did you
also around with one of the typical canvas bags over your shoulders”? You were
not involved in the movement itself. Was this a condition for your writing the
book?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Well, yes. The Anti Apartheid
Movement was riddled by factions. So the problem was that groups were competing
with one another sand could raise the issue that one was getting too much
attention at the expense of others.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: who by name invited you to write the
book?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Sietse Bosgra.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Sietse Bosgra. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: He was the central figure of the
Anti Apartheid Movement. He started the Committee Zuidelijk Afrika (KZA) in the
1970s, a few years after the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement itself. This KZA
must not be confused with the Comite Zuid Afrika (CZA), which existed from
shortly before the Sharpeville massacre. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: It is interesting that in the post war
years many Dutch were still aligned to the Afrikaners in the post Boer War
Tradition. Then from the time of the CZA / AABN there comes a total inversion
in a very short time. How and, why is this so?</div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Well, it is a kith and kin, or blood
relationship. The Boers were at first Dutch settlers who trekked inland. The
Dutch Reformed connection was also a powerful bond. Sharpeville was a tipping
point and also should the Christian communities. This was as result of
stringent pass laws administration. Blacks were allowed into the white areas if
they were directly invited to work for whites. (Muskens goes into more details
about the run up to and actual shootings at Sharpeville and aftermath.)</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: So out of this came a surge of
activism, but the political parties remained more or less neutral. And then of
course there were the financial interests; something similar to the sanctions
imposed by the EU and US on Russia at that time was not possible against South
Africa.</div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: If one thinks about it took the anti
apartheid movement internationally thirty years of agitation without success,
but in the case of Russia it happens almost overnight.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: In your book you make mention of the
many organizations that made up the broader anti apartheid movement. . . . . . </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: . . . . . . . you had the CZA, the
KZA, the AABN, Kairos, Boycott Outspan Action, and later the Azania Committee.
Then from mid 1980’s the radical wing of autonomous/anarchist groups which
controlled the anti apartheid media space. </div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Why is it that there were so many
groups while the issue of racial discrimination was so obvious?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens: </u>The easy answer to this is that in
the Netherlands this always happens. Each small town has two soccer clubs.
There were also ideological differences. The AABN identified with the Dutch
Communist Party, CPN. Here we think of Connie Braam . . . . . .</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: <u>.</u> . . . . . . . . And Berend
Schuitema, a strong charismatic figure. They were the two central figures. And
the other group that had no links with the CPN was the KZA.</div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Yes, the KZA was first the Angola
Committee, and when Angola was freed it focused on Southern Africa in the
broader sense. The KZA went fishing in AABN waters which caused a lot of
friction. Any attempt to b erring about some sort of fusion or collaboration
were tried, but consistently failed. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Yes, I surmised so from your book. </div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: None of the central figures were
easy people. I spoke to all concerned and found them all amicable and highly
motivated people.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: One of the people who you did not speak
to was Berend Schuitema. He still lives and is in South Africa.</div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Yes, he was the initiator of the
AABN. He was a South African exile with huge convening power and charisma. When
he spoke people hung at his lips. He led the AABN for six years. I did not
speak to him unfortunately. In 1974 there was a clash and Berend Schuitema left
Amsterdam.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: This clash and here we come again on
the topic of clashing factions, and also a lot of distrust. It was suggested by
Breyten Breytenbach, that Berend Schuitema was a traitor who had him arrested. Was
this ever proved?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: No, there was never any proof of
this. What happened is that Breytenbach got Schuitema involved in setting up a
“white wing” of the ANC.</div>
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<u>Petra Posse</u>l: so in fact to broaden the resistance to
include active whiter members in South Africa. </div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>:
Yes, part of the ANC was in favour, but part was vehemently opposed. Under
pressure of the latter the AABN kicked Berend Schuitema out of the movement.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: In your book did you find any proof of
Berend Schuitema being a spy.</div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: No.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: What happened to him?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: It was a heavy blow for him. Lost
everything and wondered around in Europe for a few years. After what he
suffered one could say that he suffered a post traumatic stress. For a while he
found himself with the IRA. This makes sense because it was anti British which are
what the Irish also were. He also rubbed shoulders with other radical movements
in Europe.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Could you say that he started drifting?
Why did you not visit him?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Well, for the reason that he went
drifting. I also read a lot about him and a lot of what he had written himself
and I felt that there was not much that I could use.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: You could also think that he became a
victim to the vicious internecine fighting? It was a time when people beat one
another’s brains out because of the polarization. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: It was enormously polarized, indeed.
There were many conflicts but which the groups managed to keep to themselves.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: I also spoke to Sietse Bosgra, the man
who handed over the archive to you. He said that when he read your book he was
amazed to realize how strong and pernicious the role of communists was within the
AABN. He said he always suspected this, but your book confirms this. This helps
him to make a reconstruction of the entire period. They wanted a regime change
in the Netherlands and were also prepared to block any Dutch funding for the
ANC. The ANC got all its funding from the Soviet Union and that is how they
wished it to stay. This was scandalous; the idea that if Western governments
started funding the ANC that it would thereby results in undermining Moscow’s
influence over the ANC.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: That checks, but in my researches I
could not directly prove this. It is true that in the offices of the AABN it
was almost totally packed with communists. Earlier this was not the case as on
the board of the AABN there were normally one or two communists. But there was
nothing confirming a formal connection between the AABN and the CPN.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Sietse Bosgra wrote a critique on your
book which confirms what I have told you. To him it seemed as if the AABN were
expecting a Russian invasion at any time. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Let us look at something else. Nelson
Mandela was an icon, a symbol of peaceful change.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: until the end of the 1970s nothing
much was known about Mandela. The ANC wished to signal the role of Mandela and
in the Netherlands this gained most traction.</div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Eventually he was freed. Let us go to
the first visit of Mandela to Amsterdam. You were also there, at the Leidse
Plein? (Some clips on Madiba’s speech and the very loud cheering around the
Leidse Plein). </div>
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<br /></div>
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Petra Possel: we are speaking with Roeland Muskens who wrote
a very thick book on the history of the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement. He
described all the fights, splits and frictions in the movement but in the end
all came together to welcome Mandela to Amsterdam. The announcement was made by
the Mayor of Amsterdam, Ed van Tijn.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Yes, a committee was put together
including mainly Amsterdam municipal officials and members of the various anti
apartheid committees. Squabbling broke out among members of the movements and van
Tijn had to intervene.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: Yes, I remember this. Connie Braam flew
in against one another in a fight and they had to be separated. Van Tijn
emphasized that he would do the introductions and chair Mandela’s meeting and
if the movement members were not satisfied with this they could bugger off.
Nelson Mandela was a poor speaker. Could you give an explanation why the Anti
Apartheid Movement hit it off with the Dutch public?</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: in my view the Anti Apartheid
Movement offered the Dutch another chance for having either collaborated with
the Nazis, or who did little. In the final analysis there was no economic or
other interest which was common between South Africa and the Netherlands.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel:</u> About the radicalization of the
movement in its later year years. We are speaking of the fires started at Makro
establishments, etc. Clip from a spokesperson from an anarchist movement, RARA:
“for years we have had agitation by the Anti Apartheid Movement for called for
Dutch firms to leave South Africa. There was no result. By setting fires to
these firms they will have costs to calculate and come to the conclusion that
they can best get out of South Africa”.<u> </u>What was the impact of this on
public opinion and on the established movements? </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: The movements, the KZA as well as
the AABN considered these actions a threat to established public opinion
supporting them.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: It is remarkable that these actions
were not branded as “terrorist”.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Yes, that also surprised me. There
was instead considerable goodwill and tolerance of these radical actions. These
radicals could build on the enormous work that went ahead of the many the
established organizations. The AABN was marginal at the time and not involved
with the Shell Oil boycott. This anarchist upsurge outflanked the AABN which
was impotent and floundering. (In the words of Petra “op z’n kont lag”), but
the incident gave it a spinning machine for media coverage.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<u>Petra Possel</u>: So basically the radical movements
overtook the institutionalised movement. As you said, “we got sand in our
eyes”. What is interesting is how events in South Africa played out in the
Netherlands. For example, the Klaas de Jonge case which in the shortest possible
time got a whole talking machine going. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: Yes, the Klaas de Jonge gave the
AABN a welcome respite and it was able to milk the event to the hilt. Klaas de
Jonge became known as the last “true Dutch hero”.</div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Petra Possel</u>: During your PhD promotion a member of
the public stood up and questioned you about the torture and murders in SWAPO
camps. In a letter to a newspaper he accused you of sidelining the question. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Roeland Muskens</u>:
Yes, I did read up on this but this was not in South Africa, but
affected Namibia. The AABN tried to smother the issue. It was only the
religious KAIROS that brought up the matter. “Torture is torture” </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Petra Possel</u>: And did you deal with Winnie Mandela
and the murder of Stompie Sepei?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Roeland Muskens</u>: In a liberation movement there are
always things that go wrong. </div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Petra Possel</u>: Yes, that I can understand. But your
book title is “Aan het Goede Kant”. So this means that both sides be seen in
the same light.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-88371257402878398242014-10-21T06:13:00.001-07:002014-10-21T06:13:28.491-07:00Jubilee South Africa Indaba, Port Alfred December 2003<img height="480" src="https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/t31.0-8/192153_10150222144529778_5227381_o.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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<li class="card clrfix yg-msg-read-container" data-author="Berend Schuitema" data-content-transformed="" data-email="jubileeeasterncape_group@{{emailDomain}}" data-msgid="686" data-reply-to-header="{"messageIdInHeader":"PDAwMDkwMWMzYzAxYSRlZGZiZjEyMCRmOGNlMDdjNEBvZW1jb21wdXRlcj4="}" data-sender-email="okhela@iafrica.com" data-sender-status="Hzzf-K9czB5JGnbKpgLZs8Dxk8ox3gDnrK1WTfNmp7qpDvfePKHncs7_ghZn76ofHScPo8W8C2OgZZohmPGJJSAtNkDd5HvJ8vZzY8M" data-system-message="" data-uid="23107130" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1413894365464_2948" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 230); height: 8137px; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: none; overflow-x: hidden; padding: 0px; zoom: 1;"><div class="wrapper" id="yui_3_15_0_1_1413894365464_2947" style="height: 8137px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 673px;">
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Berend Schuitema</div>
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<span class="tip" data-tooltip="Message sent time" pos="bottom" style="line-height: 29px;">Dec 11, 2003</span></div>
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Organization: structure and approach<br /><br />This year has been one of considerable reflection on strategy, tactics and<br />programme of action at national as well as at provincial levels.<br /><br />Momentum was carried in the process by having a number of national<br />level meetings where all provinces were together, including two national<br />councils, two strategic planning conferences and two reparations<br />conferences.<br /><br />At the very least we have found a basic consensus about working in a<br />multi-tier structure, with a National Executive Committee replicating itself<br />with Provincial Executives and finally regional and local committees. An<br />adjusted constitution has been agreed upon that will need to be ratified at<br />the next National Conference.<br /><br />Given the stalls and needed consultations to by trial and error get to<br />an even keel after rolling into some turbulence regarding the National<br />Executive Committee's going nearly defunct with withering away of members,<br />staff problems as well as coalition problems, the current NEC will have run<br />a year beyond its mandated term of office by the time of the planned<br />National Conference in March next year.<br /><br />From the viewpoint of the Eastern Cape, reflected in our submissions at<br />National Councils, sticking rigidly to constitutional mandates and allowing<br />for flexibility for the existing leadership to make interventions which<br />formally speaking could be questionable, was not in the interests of<br />allowing space and time for bringing the overall organization and programme<br />of action to where we are.<br /><br />Indeed from the Eastern Cape we have argued for common sense and<br />flexible organization to prevail over inflexible and a rigid style of<br />organization. After all, a number of very basic issues arose during the year<br />concerning type of organization, organizational methodology and approach to<br />programme of action that emphasizes "from below" local realities. Besides<br />the need to make interventions with the strategic planning and reparations<br />conferences causing cash flow problems, what above all time flow was more of<br />the essence. We needed time and space that actually went beyond the budget<br />and term of office mandate as stipulated from the last National Conference.<br /><br />Developments in the Eastern Cape<br /><br />Having established eight regional branches coinciding more or less with<br />the demarcations in the province by our partner organizations, the ECPCC and<br />the ECNGOC, structured as a Provincial Executive that flowed from the<br />regional committees was found to be unworkable. The province is large, and<br />depending on the piggy-back networking approach among our main two partners,<br />lost its original momentum. What we have found is that placing branches with<br />members who were mostly not dedicated to the anti debt and reparations<br />campaign as one's of primary interest, found that the hierarchical structure<br />of a provincial executive committee being representative in leadership of<br />the regional and local structures degenerated as only the few eventually<br />remained who did consider themselves fully committed to Jubilee.<br /><br />Ofcourse resource and technical problems of maintaining communications<br />and an even push in a uniform programme of action played a role as well.<br />Also where committed members remained they tended to be in close touch with<br />one another and able to get at least the flag flying when needed in small<br />rallies, and provincial indabas.<br /><br />Thus the best practice approach developed an own path in which quality<br />of time commitment of activists became more important than setting up<br />branches of members that were not sustainable in any uniform way. Jubilee<br />members then concentrated in building networks among progressive<br />organizations in their own localities. These then were conceived as "Jubilee<br />clusters. At the same time, to add another dimension in organization,<br />alongside these local clusters we focused on developing theme groups along<br />the lines established at our national indabas as provincial priorities.<br /><br />Local network clusters<br /><br />We thus have Jubilee clusters operating in East London (with core<br />membership in the Quigney), Mdantsane (Thabang's domain), Newlands and<br />Amalinda Forest (Ntombentsha), and Duncan Village (Wonga Manga). These three<br />clusters are in close proximity and there is regular communication between<br />the cluster coordinators. The cluster that was existing in Umtata withered<br />out of the picture mainly because of communication problems. Port Elizabeth<br />is Sikhumbuzo's terrain and a steady group of members are involved that<br />still functions as a branch. Grahamstown has fallen below the radar.<br /><br />The theme groups received less attention with the emphasis on building<br />local network clusters. A roster for monthly meetings facilitated by a local<br />Jubilee coordinator did not pan out that well. These meetings were irregular<br />and little gearing effected in getting local issues drawn in and mobilized<br />around the common theme of debt and reparations.<br /><br />Also what we find is that these local networks tend to become<br />overwhelmed by local issues with splits and other organizations befuddling<br />the picture. A breakdown and brief story for each shows some of the positive<br />as well as negative achievements.<br /><br />In the Quigney there is a strong network of comrades who have many caps<br />and meet one another at least twice but mostly more times per week in other<br />structures where they rub shoulders. The positive spin of this that for<br />events the cluster makes a strong showing, like for example our sizable<br />numbers that participated in the pickets against the Bush visit. Most are<br />connected with one another on the internet. The cluster functions as it<br />should be infusing and influence the work in a range of other structures<br />such as local SACP and ANC branches, good chain of communications with<br />COSATU members, and also a strong convergence in community policing work.<br /><br />The membership of Jubilee is implicit and taken for granted as a strong<br />core functioning in related organizations with good catalyst impact overall.<br />Because of the many hats worn it is not easy to develop a distinct Jubilee<br />group as such, nor is this really going to be constructive. Where the real<br />advantage lies is indeed in theming our work and streaming this through the<br />other organizations. The merits of the theming aspect will be discussed<br />later. Apart from each member being active in at least two organizations,<br />the time has added constraint as most hold down jobs and have to prioritize<br />their efforts.<br /><br />Newlands has the same networking dynamics with a strong pull to<br />meetings and workshops banking on a strong network of community marshals.<br />The active participation of the Ward Councilor who often makes his Ward<br />Committee accessible for Jubilee inputs and in fact his constituency<br />mobilized for Jubilee workshops.<br /><br />The newest cluster formed by Ntombentsha's moving to Amalinda Forest<br />has shown up another weakness of a cluster being drowned out to a large<br />extent because of a volatile local political situation that one finds in new<br />informal settlements. Access to water and land for housing are driving<br />issues with lots of direction and momentum fed by the Jubilee theme.<br />Meetings are packed and attract a bigger crowd than the local councilor can,<br />which in turn sparked off rubs between the councilor and SANCO people. What<br />we find, however, is raised expectations that Jubilee can deliver on its<br />message which becomes very problematic. Bringing AGS into the picture<br />immediately results in a swarm of demands for funding and other resources.<br /><br />In Mdantsane the clustering of network activity went well initially,<br />but the conflation between it and Youth For Work seems to have drowned and<br />downed the visibility and mobilizing effort of Jubilee itself.<br /><br />Duncan Village has a very strong potential pull as one of the main<br />bases of the community volunteers. Recently Wonga Monga, a veteran of the<br />old Unemployed Workers Union (UNEWU), has come into the picture.<br /><br />Umtata: group focused on land for jobs project.<br /><br />Port Elizabeth: good cadre, Sikhumbuzo is well connected among<br />unionists. Uitenhage coming into the picture with a strong group organized<br />as Uitenhage Victims Support Group".<br />Theme groups / Task Teams<br />The cluster model builds on two dimensions, one being the local<br />network clusters, the other being the theme groups in which ideally meet<br />regularly with volunteers coming from all the local groups and bolstered by<br />experienced activists in the specific field.<br /><br />Over the past year we have too much focus on the one, and not enough on<br />the other - the clusters at local level are functioning but not as they<br />should, or could. The model we put forward at a previous National Council<br />detailed both the local clusters and the various theme task teams.<br /><br />Problems<br /><br />The model, which basically concentrates on horizontal relationships<br />rather than vertical, thus basically a social movement model, ideally should<br />at some point kick in and spin out with a strengthening overall mass<br />mobilizing potential. Now that we have tried the model successful at least<br />in that it is enthusiastically supported and understood, we need to look at<br />how we can develop densification, direction and momentum in the effort.<br /><br />The EC model bears with the following:<br /><br />Coordinators of local clusters should be in regular communication with one<br />another. This means that they should meet not necessarily formally, but<br />regularly. The internet is ideal, but seemingly most comrades are either shy<br />to write and express themselves, or else have difficulty in accessing<br />internet.<br /><br />Anti-globalization part of Jubilee, or Jubilee part of anti-globalization?<br />This distinction is important to understand. Some perceive Jubilee as a sort<br />of umbrella, coat hanger if you will, for activists addressing various<br />issues. The other view is that Jubilee essentially is a catalyst group<br />active within networks that spawns social movements that focus on own<br />issues, such as AIDS activism, land for jobs, water rights etceteras.<br />Debating this should lead to much more clarity about what type of<br />organization Jubilee should be from a mass mobilization point of view.<br /><br />The nature of the province: we have three distinct components in the Eastern<br />Cape - the previous Border Region, the previous Transkei, and the previous<br />East Cape. The Border region "axis" runs from East London through Queenstown<br />to Aliwal North and includes Grahamstown. The East Cape "axis" is Port<br />Elizabeth, Uitenhage, Cradock and Graff Reinett. The Transkei center of<br />gravity probably should be Umtata. This leaves big chunks of the previous<br />Ciskei out on a limb, including the Middledrift and Whittlesea and<br />Keiskammahoek. Sterkspruit is also a huge rural area that used to fall in<br />with the old Transkei. For effective networking and optimizing the catalyst<br />role of Jubilee each of these areas should be grouped. It may well be that<br />each needs a different approach for organizing. Rationalizing the areas<br />means that similarities between various centers in these areas encourages<br />networking.<br /><br />Network environment: Each of the proposed demarcated areas have their own<br />environments. For example, the Border Region is heavy ANC territory, with a<br />lot of old SANCO influence as well. And in as far as it is ANC, the<br />perception also is that it's a "left" leaning area. The perception is<br />illusive in this sense that the mass-base is not always pliable to "top<br />down" pressures. This has more to do with the nature of branches that are<br />formally functional but actually near dead. The last round list nominations<br />process saw only 22 branches out of a total of 360 that had mandates to<br />nominate candidates for the 2004 elections because branch nomination<br />meetings did not quorate. When branches address critical issues, such the<br />debt, life kicks back into them. Notable is that at a provincial general<br />council held in 2001 resolutions were passed for the province to take<br />Jubilee on board. This as a result of our first mobilization of Jubilee in<br />the province prior to our launch in November 2000. In our experience we find<br />that in the Quigney there are vibrant ANC and SACP sub-branches purely<br />because of the vibrancy around addressing the globalization issue and<br />participation in Jubilee. In Newlands we have a virtual alliance with the<br />local councilor. In Mdantsane ANC members have turned out to overwhelm and<br />challenge Jubilee. In Amalinda Forest Jubilee's bringing out large numbers<br />sprawled into a SANCO vs. ANC dogfight. In Umtata the same happens but the<br />contention comes from the UDM and ACDP who vie for a share of the cake and<br />speaking opportunities at Jubilee meetings. These factors mean that we need<br />to determine a posture for Jubilee suited to the environment. Our posture<br />defined as a social movement rather than a contesting political party is an<br />important element to consider. If we set formal branches we land in trouble<br />with structures that themselves become contested from within. Working<br />informally as a network among networks, including political parties, such<br />contest is avoided.<br /><br />Setting up theme groups: Most of the more important social movement<br />formations in the Eastern Cape, such as the LPM and TAC, have very weak<br />structures. Some issues, like fighting water cutoffs, is a terrain that is<br />captured and at the same time smothered by SANCO. (Repressive tolerance!).<br />The ideal would be to utilize the catalyst role of Jubilee and spawn social<br />movement formations. A more effective approach is to set up the theme groups<br />more at the research and academic level and work the message through the<br />media as Jubilee. If we have partner organizations participating theme<br />workshops have to make accommodations. For example, our intended addressing<br />of the "Theology of Jubilee" in a seminar should be done not as Jubilee per<br />se, but also through the structures of the participating structure. Same<br />with the privatization matter which should be networked through COSATU<br />structures. There is quite a spin on our AIDS work but we are finding that<br />this does not remain under the Jubilee umbrella, let alone a sub-structure<br />of Jubilee, but these groups go their own way.<br /><br />One area of our thinking in Jubilee about "taking the message to the<br />masses" implies a comprehensive worldview with socialism as destination of<br />human society, or, given its theological nature, its equivalent of the final<br />outcome of the Christian era namely the coming of God's Reign. The idea<br />that by taking Jubilee to the masses as a single issue campaign model is<br />another view hanging in there, but clearly the "product" in itself is not as<br />simple as that. There are of course a few sweetly simple lines that speaks<br />to a populist audience like "why do we have to pay for apartheid twice".<br />With such lines we assume that ordinary people will be able to expand their<br />knowledge about their own social situations, dependent upon their following<br />and developing the rational analysis of the debt issue, neo-liberalism<br />etcetera.<br />The reality is that we need another context within which this approach<br />can be carried, like for example that class conscious workers understand<br />more about capitalism in the context of labour/capitalist relations. Or that<br />people who understand the bible follow the Jubilee principle as one implying<br />social transformation towards a social system of justice and equality.<br />It is our experience in the Eastern Cape that building branches on par<br />with other social movements such as the trade union movement or political<br />parties requires more than simply a Single issue campaign approach. We may<br />assume that unpacking the a b c's of the debt in related issues is enough by<br />itself but this rarely works. On the one hand we get the Amalinda Forest<br />syndrome where an infusion of the Jubilee message brings hope and at the<br />same time unrealizable expectations. Because this has no clear ideological<br />or theological message to contain the message in a campaign trajectory it<br />explodes as it were and the enthusiasm hijacked by local political<br />characters or sometimes buffoons who will then see in Jubilee a good place<br />to posture for power and influence.<br /><br />The long and short of the experience is that we need either an ideology<br />or a theology if we are to speak of Jubilee being a social movement in its<br />own right and more than simply a single issue campaign requiring the masses<br />to muster for pickets, rallies or marches.<br /><br />In summary: Jubilee is about debt slavery. But while it may appear to<br />have the potential of a mass movement, the question of national debt withers<br />as quick as it gathers around facts and figures about national budgets and<br />all that. People with AIDS know what the immediate need is - ARV and this<br />sticks firmly and provides a campaigning model that snowballs into a mass<br />movement. Or the land issue where the same is achieved, things of course<br />where we can hitch our wagon as well. But the question always remains about<br />placing the wagon before the horse, namely whether we are the horse of the<br />wagon or just a group of activists chauvinistically imposing on issues that<br />are better addressed by other movements.<br /><br />Two routes to follow to give a comprehensive jacket and dressing up of<br />our campaign model are developing the theology of Jubilee and mobilizing the<br />message by building community policing structures.<br /><br />Theology of Jubilee<br /><br />Unpacking the theology of Jubilee on ethical lines of social justice<br />and equality is straight forward and could fill the present day void left by<br />the demise of liberation theology. Taking the Old Testament idea of their<br />being a once per generation scrapping of debt, restoration of land and<br />nature carries through the spirit of the resultant social revolution to the<br />New Testament understanding of the teachings of Jesus Christ. This is<br />teaching of the social gospel with the proof being the early Christian<br />society that Marx and Rosa Luxemburg regarded as a form of communism. Social<br />redemption was attractive to slaves, but the ethical redemption that came<br />with the reification of God ofcourse saw the building of new hierarchies,<br />land accumulation in religious establishment, in any case the social gospel<br />manifesting in a human society was only of a few centuries duration.<br /><br />For some reason interesting to understand the concept of the social<br />gospel on the Jubilee principle did not tick along with the expedient use of<br />the term to justify a one-off eradication of poor world debt with the<br />opening of the new millennium. However if we look back in history we see the<br />principle carrying waves of social transformation, for example in the<br />peasant revolts of the fifteenth century. The social turmoil at the time saw<br />the rise of a counter revolution which quelled the Hessian idea of land<br />restoration with the Luther Reformation which some see as a pretext for<br />capitalist ideology. In the nineteenth century the idea of Jubilee related<br />to land restoration again was raised by Georgism in which land was central<br />in a social transformation approach based on taxes on land negating any idea<br />that it was in the domain of public ownership. But this drift did not carry<br />through although there is a Henry George Institute continuing the<br />proselytizing of this idea today.<br /><br />In the modern context it seems that the theology of liberation is<br />softball playing in the arena of religious fundamentalism. It appears that<br />the "born again" movement is comprehensive and attractive even to George W<br />Bush. Everything in the Bible has to be taken at literal value excepting,<br />funnily enough, the Jubilee principle. This is "tough theology" that has no<br />place for social concern other than the immanent coming of Christ and the<br />rapture of all believers, leaving the earth to be fought over by<br />apocalyptical forces. Social redemption is redemption of the soul fit for<br />another realm, and land restoration is achieved in a millennium of peace<br />that either comes before or after the apocalypse.<br /><br />The rightwing alignment of the fundamentalist movements does deal with<br />land but in a rather ironic twist that Christian Zionism has imposed. The<br />Jews must get their land back first as precondition for the apocalypse. The<br />city of Armageddon is seen as the place where this big apocalyptical battle<br />ensues, and all the right things are apparently happening with the war in<br />the Middle East in fulfillment of the literalist interpretation of the word<br />of God.<br /><br />In order to get away from the softball liberation theology we also need<br />to go hardball. Eschatology seems to be the dominant hermeneutic and raises<br />more global, fundamental issues. Neo-liberalism has celebrated itself after<br />the fall of the Berlin Wall as the "end of history" - there are no longer<br />any other alternatives. It opens the way to looking at pre-history, a phase<br />what Marx called "primitive communism" as the beginning of the human saga,<br />and the communist society as the end product of history. Alienation starts<br />with history, ends when history ends.<br /><br />The issue of alienation is central to the new social movement<br />discourse. In this sense the idea that alienation of labour is the backbone<br />with all other forms of alienation the ribs is being challenged. Is the<br />working class the one and only agency of struggle? Are social movements<br />autonomous areas of liberation that are agencies of revolutionary<br />development, does the concept of the multitudes replace the concept of the<br />working class as single and central thrust in the overthrow of capitalism?<br />These are the sorts of questions we need to answer as new social movement<br />activists and militants.<br /><br />Community Policing<br /><br />The focus on Community Policing as a distinct theme in Jubilee work in<br />the Border region has had some replication in other provinces, the NW and<br />NC. Others feel that organizing community policing forums is too<br />formalistic and more in the terrain of preservation of class rule from a<br />maintenance of law and order. Others point out a contradiction in that more<br />often than not we hit police road blocks when social movement activity gets<br />out of hand, like with the experiences of the Anti Eviction Campaigns, the<br />beating up of APF members by POPCRU members, or police action in<br />Johannesburg during the W$$D march. Human rights are progressively at stake,<br />especially the right to protest and the police are seen to be on the other<br />side of the fence. Which is all true, of course.<br /><br />Policing in post-Apartheid South Africa is by any account one of the<br />main arenas of transformation. We should regard this as contested terrain,<br />given the liberation movement background. Most national liberation movements<br />found themselves in situations where social control mechanisms had to be set<br />up. South Africa has this in abundance. First is the whole idea of<br />traditional policing which is still the order of the day in the rural,<br />former Bantustan areas. It largely operates outside of the legal framework<br />and mostly has a positive, conciliatory nature when and where it is applied<br />nowadays. The point is the necessity for this as the rural areas are mostly<br />poorly policed and little access to the criminal justice system. This is<br />another aspect of the neo-liberal agenda where state resources for policing<br />are minimized and dependence shifted to private security to those who can<br />afford it. Clearly then we have a contested terrain and a primary social<br />issue. Safety and security is one of the fundamental human rights.<br /><br />If one looks at the liberation movement experience community policing<br />was not simply a preferred thing to do, but vital. Policing of the black<br />townships spread from vigilante groups spawned by bantustan authorities not<br />only tolerated, but fuelled by the Apartheid police. Without policing and<br />law there is no way any social system can work - policing is central to any<br />social reconstruction whether good or bad.<br /><br />Likewise the UDF found itself also forming an counter structure for<br />social defence and also control as an embryonic form of what policing which<br />eventually be in a liberated South Africa. The rise of the civic<br />organizations, especially in the East Cape (In PE, PEPCO etc) and the Border<br />region therefore saw the development of social structures build on block,<br />area and street committees.<br /><br />Like with other things that did not pan out as intended along the lines<br />of the Freedom Charter, a totally transformed community-based policing did<br />not reflect in the ANC's neo-liberal drifting. But that does not mean that<br />we should regard this as a gone forever project - a transformed community<br />policing is still a vital component of the revolutionary agenda. If police<br />and law enforcement is the most fundamental fact of life in a liberal<br />democracy, then that does not mean that a post capitalist society has not<br />policing needs. It continues to be a fundamental need that should be<br />addressed as part and parcel of the new social movement transformation of<br />governance from below.<br /><br />What we can say is that working on the community policing front is also<br />embryonic, a fundamental building block in a social movement strategy. In<br />our experience in the border region the very reason why it is so important<br />is that community policing allows intervention not only to develop the<br />ideology of community policing with the progressive elements of POPCRU as<br />main partner, but also to start mapping out activities that link in all<br />other aspects of social movement activity as well.<br /><br />Globalization and community policing<br /><br />The issue of public security is one of the most under researched and<br />least visible aspects of struggle in the complexity of the new social<br />movements. In the case of Brazil, for example, no real thought was given to<br />transforming policing after the fall of the dictatorship. Police remains to<br />this day military-style with no social movement counter backup. On the other<br />hand policing does remain a vital concern in any society and authoritarian<br />policing systems under attack in developed liberal democracies.<br /><br />There are a whole range of interconnects between policing challenges in<br />the context of globalization. First we have privatization schemes to replace<br />state policing. Second, like with education and public health, state<br />spending on policing is constrained. The combined effect of this as we<br />experience it in South Africa is class privilege for policing in the rich<br />areas able to back up with private security, and lack of state criminal<br />justice systems in the poor, townships and especially the rural area.<br /><br />Evidently then a major area of social concern and ideological struggle.<br />Unlike in the situation of Brazil, the philosophy of community policing<br />adopted in South Africa does make some connection with informal policing<br />systems developed on the ground by communities fighting Apartheid. In the<br />Border region the broadest and most solid network of activists that came<br />into Jubilee still have their hands full with continuing this area of<br />struggle.<br /><br />Furthermore, how important the issue is can also be looked at from the<br />point of view of a "negative disconnect" between the struggle period and<br />now. The rise of dangerous vigilante movements experienced during the height<br />of the struggle years have taken on a new form and operate today as well.<br />Mostly this is about people both with reactionary and also good backgrounds<br />who found themselves unemployed and thrown away after 1994. The<br />proliferation of these groups is well illustrated by the rise of a group<br />calling itself the "Peninsula Anti Crime Agency" (PEACA) made up of ex<br />"combatants" who do "crime prevention" by extorting and embezzling recovered<br />goods and fees. In the East London we found a similar organization that had<br />to be crushed by community mobilization through the progressive Quigney<br />Policing Forum.<br /><br />Crime, punishment and community policing is a revolutionary concept<br />that needs to counter reactionary ideology and practices on a consistent<br />basis. Crime can be categorized as 1) property related crime; 2) crime<br />against the state; and 3) crime against persons. The first two are what most<br />crime and retributive punishment is all about to maintain the capitalist<br />system. If one removes these two probably 90% of crime is done away. In<br />other words, if we base society on socialism, democracy and freedom the 10%<br />crime against persons dwindles-but there will always be the need for the<br />most basic of community organization for resolving fights and disputes.<br /><br />POSTSCRIPT<br /><br />I have a lot of thinking going on related to the work I am doing with<br />Jubilee as well as with community policing. The practical involvement with<br />both did not fall from the sky, or a matter of expedience or accident or<br />even bad luck outcome of decades of struggle. The community policing<br />involvement started during the transition period as a dedicated member of<br />the erstwhile liberation movement, the ANC.<br /><br />I was privileged to have been given the assignment by the ANC leaders<br />immediately after the democratic elections of 1994 to take forward the<br />marshals structure in the Border Region as the central organized thrust of<br />community volunteers who would drive a popular RDP. This came to naught as<br />the RDP withered and the neo-liberal era took root. Discovering Jubilee in<br />1998 was a discovery of reason for why things had gone otherwise and dashing<br />hope and expectation of thousands of community volunteers with whom I was<br />involved.<br /><br />Based on my three years of experience I find the need for an<br />ideological basis to push forward with the anti debt and reparations<br />campaign. It makes sense to me especially as I am also on the TRC<br />reparations list alongside some of my comrades, let alone the many comrades<br />who offered themselves, their education and came out of the struggle<br />basically cast aside. Probably the reparations theme is more potent than the<br />debt theme, the former being broader than the latter. Which at the same time<br />gives the basis for lots of ideological discourse related to the future<br />struggle for a just and equitable society globally, and South Africa within<br />that context.<br /><br />In my view alienation is central and its practical liberating side is<br />simply the building of human solidarity. This in itself is an ethical<br />project that needs to be thought out and presented as a unifying ideology<br />underpinning the new social movements.<br /><br />BS</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-7844546153218541272014-10-04T07:54:00.004-07:002014-11-01T08:12:25.887-07:00Reparations case filed in U.S. Courts against apartheid profiteers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Professor Patrick Bond, Jubilee South </b></div>
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<i><u><b><span style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;">"Jubilee SA's Berend Schuitema reported that Maduna made an</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;">extraordinary confession: "The reason why he had made the objection was</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;">that he was asked for an opinion on the lawsuit by Colin Powell. He gave</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;">Powell his written response, whereupon Powell said that he should lodge</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #434343; font-family: Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.9899997711182px;">this submission to the judge of the New York Court. Howls from the floor."</span></b></u></i><br />
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July 08, 2008 Edition 1<br />
<br />
Patrick Bond<br />
<br />
Today, the fascinating case of $400 billion (R3 trillion) in claims by<br />
black South Africans against multinational corporations once again comes<br />
to Judge John Sprizzo's New York Southern District Court.<br />
<br />
At the scene will be former Robben Islander and honorary UKZN professor<br />
Dennis Brutus, a leading plaintiff, but just one among many thousands of<br />
compatriots now rebelling against their government's disapproval of this<br />
Alien Tort Claims Act lawsuit.<br />
<br />
Only in the past two decades has the law become widely known. More than<br />
100 cases were filed in US courts, beginning with a Paraguayan torture<br />
victim.<br />
<br />
Encouraged by Burmese villagers fighting the US oil firm Unocal, a case<br />
which in 2003 withstood challenge by the Bush administration, activists<br />
like Brutus, Cape Town academic Lungisile Ntsebeza, the Khulumani<br />
Support Group and Jubilee SA used the Act to sue dozens of multinational<br />
corporations operating in SA during apartheid.<br />
<br />
The South African government was asked by the Bush administration to<br />
oppose the cases, and in part because Pretoria complied, Judge Sprizzo<br />
initially decided the case on behalf of corporate defendants in late<br />
2004. He reasoned that the Act conflicted with US foreign policy and<br />
South African domestic economic policy.<br />
<br />
But last October, litigants won an appeal on the grounds that Sprizzo's<br />
logic was faulty. In May, the US Supreme Court was expected to finally<br />
kill the lawsuit on behalf of the corporations, but four of the justices<br />
discovered conflicts of interest in their own investment portfolios, as<br />
they owned shares in the target firms. The case went back to Sprizzo, in<br />
what the plaintiffs' Cape Town-based lawyer, Charles Abrahams, argued<br />
was "a massive victory for the international human rights movement as a<br />
whole".<br />
<br />
According to Nicole Fritz, director of the Southern African Litigation<br />
Centre in Johannesburg: "Companies that were not perpetrators of human<br />
rights violations but were complicit in such violations through their<br />
dealings with oppressive governments are now potentially liable in law<br />
for their actions."<br />
<br />
Objective<br />
<br />
Disincentivising future profit-taking from dictatorships such as Burma<br />
or Zimbabwe is a central objective.<br />
<br />
Last month, just as Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF paramilitaries committed<br />
sufficient murder and torture to ensure his "re-election", thanks in<br />
part to President Thabo Mbeki's perpetual connivance, AngloPlats<br />
announced a $400 million (R3 billion) investment in lucrative Zimbabwean<br />
platinum mines.<br />
<br />
Abrahams argues: "The substantive basis of the suit is that foreign<br />
multinational corporations aided and abetted the apartheid government by<br />
providing arms and ammunition, military technology, transportation and<br />
fuel with which the government and its armed forces were able to commit<br />
the most heinous crimes against the majority of the people of South Africa."<br />
<br />
Corporations being sued include the Reinmetall Group, for providing arms<br />
and ammunition to the apartheid government; British Petroleum (BP),<br />
Shell, Chevron Texaco, Exxon Mobil, Fluor Corporation and Total<br />
Fina-Elf, for providing fuel to the armed forces; Ford, Daimler-Chrysler<br />
and General Motors, for providing transport to the armed forces; and<br />
Fujitsu and IBM for providing the government with much needed military<br />
technology.<br />
<br />
Banks financing apartheid included Barclays, Citibank, Commerzbank,<br />
Credit Suisse, Deutsche, Dresdner, J P Morgan Chase and UBS.<br />
<br />
As a leading exiled foreign representative of the African National<br />
Congress before 1994, Mbeki supported the demand that multinational<br />
corporations disinvest from SA.<br />
<br />
But in 2001, at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, he<br />
opposed a clause that the "US should take responsibility and pay<br />
reparations for the trans-atlantic slave trade", which was supported by<br />
Nigeria and other African states.<br />
<br />
In April 2003, Mbeki announced that it was "completely unacceptable that<br />
matters that are central to the future of our country should be<br />
adjudicated in foreign courts".<br />
<br />
Public enterprises minister Alec Erwin insisted that Pretoria was<br />
"opposed to, and contemptuous of the litigation". Any findings against<br />
apartheid-tainted companies "would not be honoured" within SA, he blustered.<br />
<br />
In July 2003, then-justice minister Penuell Maduna told the US courts<br />
that "the litigation could have a destabilising effect on the SA economy".<br />
<br />
But as a friend of the court on behalf of the claimants (alongside<br />
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu), Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz<br />
replied that such analysis had "no basis," because "those who helped<br />
support that system, and who contributed to human rights abuses should<br />
be held accountable".<br />
<br />
Maduna's letter to the US court requested that the lawsuits be<br />
dismissed, "in deference to the sovereign rights of foreign countries to<br />
legislate, and adjudicate domestic issues without outside interference".<br />
<br />
But in August 2003, at the opening plenary of a major Reparations<br />
Conference, Jubilee SA's Berend Schuitema reported that Maduna made an<br />
extraordinary confession: "The reason why he had made the objection was<br />
that he was asked for an opinion on the lawsuit by Colin Powell. He gave<br />
Powell his written response, whereupon Powell said that he should lodge<br />
this submission to the judge of the New York Court. Howls from the<br />
floor. Jubilee SA chairman M P Giyose pointed out the bankruptcy of the<br />
sovereignty argument."<br />
<br />
Conflict<br />
<br />
To be sure, conflict between plaintiffs makes it harder to win the<br />
hearts and minds of the broader public. The first set of cases was filed<br />
by a discredited New York lawyer who was active in a previous Alien Tort<br />
Claims Act lawsuit that generated $8 billion (R61.7 billion) in<br />
Holocaust-related out-of-court settlements. But that lawyer soon fell<br />
out with Ntsebeza.<br />
<br />
Between the Khulumani Support Group and Jubilee, tensions arose over<br />
claims to ownership of the case and over direction of strategy. And<br />
between Jubilee's former Johannesburg staff, on the one hand, and on the<br />
other, board members and several provincial chapters, a dispute erupted<br />
that temporarily paralysed the organisation.<br />
<br />
Still, Brutus believes the plaintiffs can leapfrog Mbeki to appeal to a<br />
much richer strand of African nationalism than the appeal to sovereignty.<br />
<br />
The Organisation of African Unity made a case for reparations in 1993 in<br />
the Abuja Proclamation against slavery, colonialism, and<br />
neo-colonialism. That damage is "not a thing of the past, but is<br />
painfully manifest in the damaged lives of contemporary Africans from<br />
Harlem to Harare, in the damaged economies of the black world from<br />
Guinea to Guyana, from Somalia to Surinam".<br />
<br />
A "moral debt is owed to the African peoples", the Abuja Proclamation<br />
declares, requiring "full monetary payment and debt cancellation".<br />
<br />
If the activists lose, in the event that Sprizzo develops a more<br />
coherent defence of apartheid profits, the challenge for civil society<br />
will not only be to turn up the street heat. Perhaps SA needs its own<br />
Alien Tort Claims Act to hold corporations responsible for damage.<br />
<br />
And a new government in 2009 will perhaps embrace the activists'<br />
reparations demands, so as to remind us of African economic liberation,<br />
instead of Mbeki's legacy: crony capitalism, capital flight, corporate<br />
tax cuts, corrupt arms deals, cheap electricity to influence-peddling<br />
minerals firms, and other forms of class apartheid.<br />
<br />
# Patrick Bond directs the Centre for Civil Society at the UKZN.</blockquote>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-22478485714679090132014-09-25T23:53:00.000-07:002014-09-25T23:54:23.416-07:00The Dutch connection: Conny Braam holding a unique part of South Africa's history and heritage<h2>
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The Dutch connection: Conny Braam holding a unique part of South Africa's history and heritage</h2>
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Few can claim to have personally met and befriended quite as many ANC leaders in exile the 1970s as Conny Braam, one of the founders of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement. Oliver Tambo, Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, Mac Maharaj, a young Thabo Mbeki and many others all crossed paths with Braam, who played a key role in the ANC’s 1986 underground Operation Vula. Braam has just visited South Africa to research her next book. By MARIANNE THAMM.<br />
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One of the most surprising developments for Conny Braam - whose enthusiasm and stamina for writing and engaging global political undercurrents remains undiminished after six decades - is that many of her former Operation Vula comrades today find themselves working for SARS, overseeing the collection of tax revenue and particularly from those who are reluctant to hand it over.<br />
<br />
One of the key figures in the underground mission to establish communication links between London, Lusaka and Nelson Mandela in Victor Verster prison in 1986, was, of course Pravin Gordhan, former SARS Commissioner, Minister of Finance and current Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Gordhan is credited with turning SARS into one of the most ethical and effective government departments.<br />
Another is Ivan Pillay, current SARS Acting Commissioner, who was selected by the late SACP General Secretary, Joe Slovo, to head up Operation Vula’s logistics in Lusaka.<br />
<br />
Braam, a vocal and tireless opponent of Apartheid and who helped to launch the highly effective Dutch Anti-Apartheid movement in Amsterdam in 1971, was tasked with not only disguising the Apartheid government’s “most wanted” high ranking exiled ANC leaders so that they could slip into South Africa undetected, but also with locating safe houses in neighbouring countries.<br />
<br />
The highly secret mission – many in the ANC, including Thabo Mbeki, did not know of its existence - consumed five years of Braam’s life as she dodged attempts to assassinate her. She was almost poisoned while in Mozambique in 1987. Operation Vula was uncovered in 1990 when nine operatives, including Mac Maharaj and Siphiwe Nyanda, were arrested inside the country.<br />
<br />
The entire mission, which has been written about extensively, helped form deep and lasting allegiances that continue in present-day South Africa. President Jacob Zuma was, at the time, the head of ANC intelligence and was also part of the operation. The story of the mission is one filled with all the intrigue, tension, personal risk and high drama of a cold war spy novel with Braam playing a pivotal role. Braam documented her version of events in her 2004 book, <em>Operation Vula,</em> published locally by Jacana.<br />
<br />
And it is these old connections that led Braam to the narrative of her 13<sup>th</sup> and latest book published in Dutch in April and titled, <em>The Beast of Kruger</em>. The book, also to be published by Jacana, will be translated by Fred De Vries and released in South Africa next year. The thriller is based on an actual SARS investigation into Rhino poaching, but threaded through is a gripping saga of global crime syndicates, the involvement of shady former Apartheid agents as well as what it is that as drives the apparently insatiable desire for rhino horn, particularly in Vietnam, where the last Javan rhino was killed in 2011. The species is now extinct.<br />
“The market is essentially in Vietnam. And what drives this? The high number of patients with cancer. And what has caused this? We can trace it back directly to chemicals used during the Vietnam war in the 1970s,” says Braam.<br />
<br />
Braam is essentially a journalist and her body of work consists mostly of historic fiction based on unexpected facts and which she says she offers readers an opportunity to view real events with “new eyes” and to find the underlying links with power and money.<br />
<br />
Her 2012 novel, <em>The Cocaine Salesman</em>, is based on the actual Nederlandsche Cocaïne Fabriek (The Dutch Cocaine Factory), which supplied the drug, at tremendous profit, to both sides fighting World War I. After the war, the factory was sold to the British government and many soldiers returning from the hell of frontline trenches were left seriously addicted.<br />
<br />
“Holland was a neutral country but there was this cocaine factory and in fact soldiers on the front lines were given the drug so that they could become these fighting machines. You can imagine the havoc this wreaked on millions of lives,” said Braam about the book.<br />
<br />
Braam came across the story of the history of the cocaine factory while researching the Abraham trilogy, about her family, and discovered that at the end of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, Holland had made huge fortunes selling opium from a state-run factory in Indonesia. The cocaine factory was located in Weespertrekvaart in Amsterdam and which is today the headquarters of the Hells Angels.<br />
<br />
It is precisely this sort of quirky detail Braam was searching for when she linked up with Ivan Pillay, a good friend, who had mentioned the SARS rhino poaching investigation, “one of their most spectacular cases”.<br />
“I needed a case, an attractive case for my next book. I thought that tax could be boring and, of course, I hate paying tax myself. But on a trip to South Africa I visited the SARS headquarters in Pretoria where I was introduced to the members of the Special Investigation Unit.”<br />
<br />
Braam said she had been “hugely impressed” with the team, particularly the fact that so many strong young women were part of it.<br />
<br />
“I was looking for a strong female lead character and I was wondering whether it was all just wishful thinking until I met the team and saw six or seven such women who work in the unit.”<br />
<br />
She was also struck, she says, by the ethos of the team, its strong anti-corruption ethic and the fact members of the team are “incorruptible”.<br />
<br />
“I was so very proud that the commitment that all of us had in Operation Vula to a mission bigger than ourselves is present in the team at SARS. After 1994 I had often wondered where, if I had been South African, I would have gone or played a role. Of course the new government discovered the treasury had been looted and had to start filling it up again. And I thought that this is a marvelous way to contribute to South Africa.”<br />
<br />
Braam is a repository of the history of ANC leaders in exile and spent many nights in her Amsterdam home or in London talking with Tambo, Dadoo, Slovo, Thabo Mbeki, Kasrils and many other then leading lights in the struggle.<br />
<br />
“They used to come and sleep on my couch and they would stay there for days,” she recalls fondly.<br />
One of the most moving moments for her, she says, was the discovery, on her recent return to do research in Phalaborwa in Limpopo for her book, that Johannesburg International Airport had been renamed OR Tambo.<br />
<br />
“For some reason this development had not lodged in my mind. And when I looked down and saw the stamp in my passport I cried immediately. I could not believe it. I will treasure that stamp. I knew Tambo so well and am so thrilled that the airport is named after him.”<br />
<br />
Braam has just spent a few months in Nambia researching her next book on the Namaqua King, Hendrik Witbooi, one of nine Namibian national heroes who lead a rebellion against German rule in the country.<br />
“He is a fascinating historical character and I would say one of the great revolutionary guerillas of Africa. He spoke an Afrikaans that is closer to Dutch and left a wealth of writing including his diaries.”<br />
The truth of the Herero and Namaqua genocide in Nambia – a campaign of racial extermination by the government of German South-West Africa between 1904 and 1907 and which wiped out over 140,000 people - has not yet been told, she says. The event is considered the first genocide of the 2oth century. Braam hopes to revive interest in the massacre in her forthcoming book, which features Witbooi as the protagonist.<br />
“I was so shocked when I visited the dunes where the thousands are buried to find that the bones are all exposed and that white holiday makers are riding their quad bikes over them,” said Braam.<br />
<br />
Braam said the difference between post-liberation Namibia and South Africa is the making of visible history.<br />
“I love that in South Africa there are murals, there are roads that have been renamed, there are statues, the airports have been renamed and that contemporary history is everywhere. When you arrive in Cape Town it is there. Whereas in Windhoek I found few traces of freedom. Everything is still in German, even the street names.”<br />
<br />
It is perhaps apt that Braam is in the country during Heritage month as the role she played in the country’s struggle for democracy is considerable. It is a connection that shaped her as much as it helped to shape the country we live in today. <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">DM</span></strong></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-91788395765917272892014-08-19T02:09:00.003-07:002015-04-04T11:01:47.287-07:00How Okhela was betrayed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Berend Schuitemma 2011 discussing with ex-mineworkers and families (above)</b><br />
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<b><i>(Excerpted & translated from "Aan het goede Kant", PhD thesis of Roland Muskens, Amsterdam September 2013. No permission asked as all the information about me has never been confirmed with me. Obviously there are some serious misrepresentations, but basically the story is correct) </i> </b></div>
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<b>Okhela and the fall 0f Berend Schuitema</b></div>
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Okhela was the resistance organization in which white South
African exiles wished to engage in the struggle against Apartheid, and to mobilize
white progressive within South Africa. The organization was the brainchild of
Breyten Breytenbach and Johnny Makatini, an ex-boxer and representative of the
ANC for North Africa. Also Oliver Tambo,
the top man of the ANC, knew about and supported the Okhela initiative. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Oliver Tambo’s biographer, Luli Callinicos, describes the
links Tambo, Makatini and Breytenbach. Tambo as well as Makatini were
proponents for the ANC being a broad-based, pragmatic movement with the options
of cooperation with all possible opponents of Apartheid. Makatini was above all
interested in contacts with the ‘new left’ movement that became influential in
Europe and America during its widespread opposition to the Vietnam War. With
this Tambo and Makatini stood against the SACP who were first and foremost
interested in working with the Soviet Union and its satellite states. “Johnny
had many bed partners which benefited the ANC”, Callinicos quotes Neo Moikangoa
the personal assistant of Tambo as saying. Callinicos describes a winters night
in 1972 in Paris when Tambo, on initiative of Makatini, met with Breytenbach. Breytenbach offered to mobilize the Afrikaner
intelligentsia to support the ANC. According to Breytenbach, whites were also
victims of Apartheid. </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Through his Dutch publisher, Rob van Gennep, Breytenbach
came in contact with an editor, Jacques Meerman who was also an activist with
the AABN. Meerman: “Breyten came to the publisher and Rob said: you must meet
someone, who is with the AABN”. In her
book, Bokslagter, Connie Braam quotes Berend Schuitema about his meeting with
Breytenbach. “’When there was a call at the door of the Anne Frank House, I
moved to the window of my attic office. Below on the gracht pavement was
Jacques Meerman with a tall guy. It seemed to me a South American, elegantly
clothed, a sort of playboy. When they came into my office after a long climb up
the three floors of stairs, Jacques introduced our visitor: Breyten
Breytenbach, the renowned Afrikaner poet and artist. Of course I knew the name
but I never met him or ever saw a photo of him. I found him a strange figure,
with long hair and a golden ring in his hair. Of course we all had long hair -
there was nothing unusual about that. But his elegance and suave he made an odd
impression of some eccentric middle class professional. He sank into an easy chair
and lit his pipe. I must honestly say I was confused. Such a South African I
had never met before. ‘” <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the days that followed Breyten win Schuitema as a member
of the organization, Okhela (“Okhela” – spark in isiZulu), a white resistance
organization in the struggle against Apartheid. According to Breytenbach,
Okhela resorted under the wing of the ANC but not aligned with the SACP. The idea behind the separation between the
ANC and the SACP was that the first step for many whites would be too drastic
and radical to fight on the side of black South Africans. Meerman: “We found
the story of Breyten credible. We decided that the AABN would give support to
Okhela”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Following Breyten, Schuitema, Braam and Meerman entered an
underground world where they came in contact with representatives of resistance
movements from all over the world. Central in this network stood the Egyptian
Jewish exile, Henri Curiel. During the Second World War as well as in the
Algerian national liberation war Curiel did underground solidarity work. The
knowledge and experiences he had gained from these he now made available to
liberation movements such as the ANC, SWAPO, Frelimo, the Rhodesian liberation
movements, as well as to anti-fascist fighters in Greece, Spain, Portugal and
the resistance in Chili against the Pinochet regime. An accusation made by the French journal Le
Point that Curiel also supported and had links with the Red Army Faction
(so-called Baader Meinhof group), and the Italian Red Brigades, was
investigated by French and found to be untrue. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Curiel founded Solidarite as a sort of service- and training
bureau for liberation movements throughout the world. This involved
surveillance techniques, coding of messages, use of invisible inks, use of arms
and explosives and reading of military maps, et cetera. Also designing
political propaganda projects and mobile printing were in the training offered
by Solidarite. Curiel also provided false passports and other documents. Curiel had many ANC members under his
tutelage. In 1978v Curiel was assassinated at the doorstep of his Paris
apartment by two members of a sinister group calling itself “Delta”. This crime
was never solved but according to one theory the South African intelligence
service BOSS was involved. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Also members of the AABN received training, according to
Meerman: “Connie, Berend and I were taught coding of messages”. Soon Okhela –
assisted by Meerman, Braam and Schuitema - sent people illegally to South
Africa and the frontline states to establish contacts and pass through
information and material. In this way
Berend Schuitema himself went to South Africa illegally in 1974. Meerman: “On
his first trip Berend had to pass money through to SWAPO. We gave him the role
of an inspector of the Dutch ANWB, a tourist organization, to check hotels in
South Africa. We even wrote a fake introduction letter on ANWB letterhead.
Berend went in with the passport of Professor Waterbolk of the Archaeology
department of the University of Groningen. This passport was pinched by his son
who was active with us. Waterbolk was later furious about this”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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With the Okhela initiative the AABN found itself on the
borderline of solidarity. The paramilitary training of different members of the
AABN in Paris indicated that they were prepared to play a role in the struggle
against Apartheid in South Africa itself. For Schuitema in particular this step
was not far off. This was not unique within the Dutch activist world. During
the 70s there were numerous groups of activists who did not shun armed struggle
within their own society or elsewhere.
Terrorist groups like the Red Army Fraction (RAF) also found support in
the Netherlands in small dedicated groups. And in larger circle while not
getting active support, the RAF found understanding for its motivations for its
radical approach. There were cells of activists in the Netherlands lending
logistical or material support to foreign resistance movements and terrorist
groups. To choose for violence – real
or only in word – did not necessarily result in political isolation during the
1970s. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The regular absences of Schuitema for sometimes extended
periods started raising frustrations in the AABN office. He was getting more
deeply involved in Okhela activities. Ton
Korver: “During those years Berend was often away without him giving a reasonable
explanation to his AABN comrades. He defended his activities with mention of
names like Johnny Makatini or Frene Ginwala (a South African exile and later
speaker of the democratic parliament), and indicated that he was in ANC camps
in Algiers and Tanzania”. Kier Schuringa: “I knew that he was in South Africa. Okhela
security was simply bad. That due also to Berend being surrounded by a veil of
secrecy, one always sought for reasons for this. Apart from Braam and Meerman, who also
involved in Okhela, nobody knew the finer details for the absences of
Schuitema. Korver knew about Okhela, but what exactly Schuitema was doing was
not clear. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Meanwhile the contacts between the AABN and the ANC were firming
up. The ANC realized that with the AABN they had a solid and meaningful ally in
the Netherlands. The first action of the AABN disrupting a South African Springbok
skimming tournament had the support of the ANC. But after the sensational
exposures on the breaking of sanctions against Rhodesia it was impossible for
the Dutch solidarity movement to lose its impressive status and recognition it
had gained. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What stuck in the crop of Meerman was the fact that Okhela
was not allowed to be mentioned in discussions with members of the ANC. During
that period the PAC also progressively played a bigger role. And there were
discussions over the role of the SACP. The last thing that the AABN wanted was
to become party to internal ANC affairs. We did not want to jeopardize the good
relations with the ANC. Connie and I then went to London and told about Okhela
and what we did. Reg September and Duma Nokwe appeared to know nothing about
Okhela. Connie Braam and Jacques Meerman were told that the ANC – in any case
an important part of the liberation movement were not happy about Okhela and
radically opposed to the initiative. Particularly the given of an exclusively
white organization linked to the ANC raised serious questions and seen as
contradictory to the principle of non-racialism was confirmed in the so-called
Morogoro Conference as guiding principle
of the ANC. During this conference the SACP strengthened its position within
the ANC at the expense of the so-called African Nationalists. In particular the
most important ANC contact person for Braam in London, SACP member Reg
September, was a confessed opponent of nay form of racial grouping within the
ANC. For a minority of ANC top figures, among whom presumably the head of the
movement, Oliver Tambo, were of the opinion that the ANC did not have to define
its relationship to a group like Okhela and that there was no need for a formal
rejection. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In London the issue boiled over and tempers flared: during a
large meeting finally 8 members of the African Nationalist group, the so-called
“Gang of Eight”, all prominent members of the ANC National Executive Committee,
we expelled from the ANC. Remarkable was that Johnny Makatini, the brain behind
Okhela, was not expelled. Makatini was even given a “promotion” to ANC
representative in New York. Schuitema regarded the visit of Braam to London as
a stab in the back. Hereby she definitely did not choose his side. Their
personal relationship – which for other reasons already was under pressure –
was offered to ideology. The theory that
the ANC in London betrayed the unwelcome Okhela to BOSS was persistent during
this time. There is no doubt though that ANC-London – or rather the SACP-London
– wished Okhela gone rather than not. Concrete evidence for this theory is however
absent. According to Braam it is nonsense: “the story that I had informed the
SACP and that they informed BOSS, came out of the stewpot of Berend, he helped
the story into the world out of anger. Anger at me”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Connie Braam was on holiday in Ibiza when she received a
telegram that Breyten Breytenbach was arrested in South Africa on the 19<sup>th</sup>
August, 1975. The South African secret police appeared to have followed
Breytenbach during his entire stay in South Africa. Berend Schuitema who was in
South Africa during the same time, managed to jump free of the police net. On
foot he fled to Botswana and further back to the Netherlands. Immediately after
his return furious discussions broke out about Schuitema’s involvement with
Okhela. The dissention divided the AABN in two camps: camp Braam and camp
Schuitema. “For Schuitema this was traumatic. He could be enormously charming
and friendly, but also hard as hell and frightening. When things went awry with
his return he threatened people. He took me to task that I chose the other
side. He was seriously intimidating. I found it difficult to choose but I found
the position of Connie simply better. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Kier Schuringa watched the unfolding drama with amazement.
Everything played: ideology, friendship, love, sex”. The affair immobilized the
AABN, Schuringa said. The members of the AABN and activists at large could not
speak about anything else. To the outside world those involved kept tight
lipped. Fulco van Aurich who was just engaged as spokesperson of the AABN: “As
a newcomer I understood nothing of what was going on. I never saw Berend
before. Once he spoke to me because he felt that I was one-sidedly influenced
by Connie. With that I could do nothing.
I went with my intuition and a double role Berend played did not seem good to
me”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Also with the ANC the
conflict in the AABN was disturbing. The AABN was important to the ANC; it had
grown into one of the most powerful solidarity movements for the ANC in the
world, maybe even the most the largest. To save what could be saved “London”
sent over two mediators to help resolve the split in November 1975: Johnny
Makatini and Duma Nokwe. Eventually the two mediators could do nothing but
concede that both sides stood irreconcilably opposed to one another. In pure
numeric terms it was clear that Schuitema had the disadvantage, as appeared
during a plenary meeting of the movement’s members. Jacques Meerman and Fulco
van Aurich mobilized as many activists as possible. In total there were about
40 packed into office at the back of the H88. Berend was not present. Tambo and
Makatini sat behind the table making every attempt at appeasement. Especially
Tambo (Meerman means Nokwe, RM) wished above all a show of unity between. Also
Makatini. At stake was the appearance of division between the ANC and the Dutch
movement, the public and body politic.” But for the AABN members it was too
late: the split was irreconcilable.
Later in a special board meeting it was decided to inform Schuitema of
this decision. Apart from the Board
members, present also were Connie Braam and Pim Juffermans. Pim Juffermans
looks back: “I was incidentally seated between Connie and Berend. The Board
still wished to mediate, but that was no longer possible. When it became clear
to Berend that he was going to lose he first wanted to get at Connie but
because I was between them I got the punch. Then he left the room furiously,
kicking garbage bins into the gracht. Through the window I saw him walk up the
street. That is the last I saw of him or ten years”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After this Berend tried to find “accommodation” with the
Angola Committee (later renamed the KZA) of Sietse Bosgra. Sietse writes about
this: “But, for the KZA the underlying causes for the conflict were unclear and
it feared that there could be repercussions with the AABN and the ANC’s London office.
The proposal was thus turned down and a disappointed Schuitema left the
Netherlands for good. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The AABN Board was divided over the matter. It led to the departure
of the Chairperson, Dr. Piet van Andel, and Ton Korver. After the affair the
staff at the office of the AABN played a progressively more important role. The
Board of the movement withered in the background. Ton Korver: “The office, that
was Connie. She was cut out for this: she knew how to involve people in the
AABN, to bind them to the organization and mobilize volunteers. Berend could do
this as well, but he was much heavier and hands on. With Connie there was
always something light hearted” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Many observers outside of the AABN saw these developments as
part of a power struggle between communists and non-communists, fed by a
similar struggle within the ANC. Connie Braam rejects this analysis. Stronger,
according to Braam the conflict was fuelled by people who wished to see in the
conflict a communist coup. “If emotions were calmer and there were no forces
working from outside, then we still could have saved the situation. But there
were too many people active who wanted to polarize matters. A number of
journalists speculated that the conflict involved communists and
non-communists. Speculation was what Jacques and I wanted to take over power.
Cees Gloudemans wrote pages full in the Volkskrant.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Another journalist who took the theory seriously was Rudie
Kagie of the Nieuwe Linie. On the 25<sup>th</sup> of February of 1976 he wrote
that the AABN was annexed by communists and that the “last two non-communists
of the Anti-Apartheid Movement – the chairperson Piet van Andel and founding
Secretary Berend Schuitema – [..] were
recently forced to resign. Kagie quotes in the same article Piet van Andel:
When the firing of some staff members was about to happen, the District Committee
of the CPN interfered. That I found strange. I never realized that everyone
working in the office were members of the CPN. This did interest me as long as
they did their work well.” About the “pleno”, and where according to Kagie, the
expulsion of Schuitema was talked about, van Andel tells: “At this plenary
meeting all of a sudden everyone from the Medical Committee Angola were
present. I could not figure out where they suddenly came from; but it appears
that for this special occasion they were allowed to fully participate and
vote.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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The article got a furious response from van Andel’s successor,
Jaap de Visser, and the Chairperson of the Medical Committee Angola, Henk
Odink: “We are deeply disheartened that we, apart from in a well- known morning
newspaper, seldom in such a short period of time come across so many pertinent
lies”, they wrote in an undated and unpublished letter to the Editor of the
Nieuwe Linie. In this letter they suggested that the article of Kagie “in form
and content could be localized. Those who followed the South African press over
the past time know that a campaign has been waged in which attacks on diverse
solidarity committees were combined with attacks on communism. This is of
course no coincidence: now that the former Portuguese colonies fought for their
independence and the freedom of Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa coming in
sight, the white fascists in Pretoria and their imperialist puppets in
Washington, Bonn, Den Haag etcetera are getting consistently more uphill from
the constantly better organized solidarity committees abroad. Also Mr. Kagie
finds it important to lay his own bit in this.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Ton Korver confirms that the conflict in the AABN indeed
became subject for discussion at the District Committee of the CPN, but not in
the sphere sketched by Kagie. Korver: “Ahead of the large meeting taking place
where everything would be discussed, all members of the CPN in the AABN were convened
for a meeting by Roel Walraven (the Amsterdam Chairperson of the CPN and
currently a municipal councilor). Roel had one message for them: The CPN
members have to toe one line. That meant that the minority had to abide by the
position of the majority. That of course I did not do. Roel was simply very
unhappy with the whole situation. But according to Braam it was Ton Korver
himself who brought the matter to the CPN’s attention: “Walraven had no wish to
get him or the CPN involved. He said – ‘if you cannot stop with that arguing,
then I will throw you all out of the Party’”
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Given the little interest that the CPN had until then in
South Africa and the struggle against Apartheid, it does not seem as if the
AABN affair was any part of a CPN conspiracy to engineer a ‘takeover of power’.
It is in any case clear that the camps within the CPN were drawn on party
political lines as Ton Korver could not identify himself with the position of
party comrade Braam. The same for Wil Pas, also a CPN member but staunch
supporter of Schuitema. At the same time non-communists like vice Chairperson
Jaap de Visser of the Dutch Labor Party and the nonparty affiliated treasurer
Ijsbrand Dijkstra found themselves in the camp Braam. Kier Schuringa’s
analysis: “The conflict was not ideological, but the CPN question definitely
played a role. Connie and Jacques Meerman, both members of the CPN, they played
the most important roles.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Schuitema was never able to fully get away from the odor of
a spy, a traitor. Many people are convinced that he betrayed Okhela, or worse,
that he was active for the South African Secret Service BOSS. One of these
people was Breyten Breytenbach. In an interview Breyten said: “Later he
(Schuitema) admitted that at a certain stage to have worked with the South
African Police. He claimed to have done this to gain leverage over the SACP
within the ANC and also within the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the Netherlands.
It sounds a bit naïve, hey? I can only say what I myself heard while in jail –
and this brings us to the chapter of manipulation – that Schuitema was actively
an agent of the South African government. What I do know is that friends of
mine in South Africa instituted and investigation after my arrest and for this
purpose sent someone to Europe, and this person came back to South Africa and
reported with the conviction that it was Schuitema who betrayed me.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the 2<sup>nd</sup> of February 1980 the South African
Sunday Times appeared with fat chocolate letter: ‘Another Spy Confesses’. This
was shortly after the South African police spy Captain Craig Williamson
admitted that for years he had infiltrated as Deputy Director of the University
Exchange Fund in Geneva which was waging a powerful anti-Apartheid policy. In the Sunday Times Schuitema denied that
betrayed Breytenbach, but: “I admit that I passed on information to the South
African Police, but that was only from 1978 onwards. According to this scenario
Schuitema must indeed have been arrested during his illegal visit to South
Africa and made, to buy his freedom, a deal with the security service and since
then briefed information about the opposition to the “enemy”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The question is how much value must be attached to these
“confessions” of Schuitema. After Okhela Schuitema was confused, traumatized,
lonely and desperately looking for personal political support. It is also
possible that he sought support from those he had previously fought so hard. Breyten
Breytenbach writes in his book ‘Confessions’: “It is the British intelligence
service Schuitema says nowadays, which at the time which organized the hunt on
him and which used the Black Consciousness Movement as camouflage to keep back
the revolution to expand its imperialist influence in South Africa. The only
solution he says is that we as Afrikaner nationalists stand against this. Spy?
Tragic fool? One thing is for sure: in this filthy game he is a broken pawn.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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In an interview in The New Yorker of 8<sup>th</sup> November
1993 Breyten states that he simply does not know who betrayed the mission. “I
never really found out”, he said sighing. He went on to list people who would
have known of his coming movement – “Makatini, Curiel, Schuitema, Schuitema’s
girlfriend (Connie Braam) – any of whom might conceivably have been working for
BOSS, or, more likely, for the London ANC which would have had a motive itself
to betray this upstart organization of independent activists to BOSS. ‘And who knows? Maybe there weren’t any finks
as such – maybe nobody intentionally betrayed anyone. Maybe they – the BOSS and
the others – were just damn good at what they do, and had us under good, solid
surveillance the entire time. Or maybe we just got sloppy and inadvertently
screwed things up.’”<o:p></o:p></div>
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That Breytenbach himself went about his mission to South
Africa in a most sloppy and reckless manner and showed total disregard for what
he had been taught by his lessons and warnings at Solidarite is beyond
question. In “Confessions” Breytenbach sketches how his mission was doomed from
the very beginning onwards. The biggest blunder was undoubtedly that the poet
flirted with and later, once in Johannesburg, started a relationship with an
SAL air stewardess, Anna van Niekerk. (According to some sources she was Ana
van Schalkwyk.) Then already it was known that many SAL stewardesses were
recruited by BOSS for regular debriefings on flight passengers. Later Anna van
Niekerk married Cloete Breytenbach, the brother of the poet. The AABN received
a letter from Andre Brink in which he unpacked how irresponsible Breytenbach
had behaved himself while in South Africa. Apart from the blunder with the air hostess,
once he landed in Johannesburg he called all his acquaintances and friends
telling them that he was in South Africa. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Breytenbach could complete his whole mission and was only
arrested once he was about to board his plane back to Europe. He knew by then
that BOSS was at his heels. The people with whom he had contacted and visited
in the weeks before were all arrested and rounded up. While in detention and at
his trial that followed, Breytenbach blamed himself and openly apologized for
his deeds and even offered his personal apologies to Prime Minister Vorster for
an insulting poem he had written about Vorster.
Despite this humiliating groveling the poet was sentenced to nine years
in prison, of which he served seven before being released in 1982. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After his arrest a support committee was established for
Breytenbach in which publishers Rob van Gennep and Laurence van Krevelen were
the driving forces. Adriaan van Dis as well as Aad Nuis was also active in the
Breytenbach Committee. The existing Anti-Apartheid originations kept their
distance and had no contact. Aad Nuis commented: “When after his arrest a support committee
was formed there was a lot of response from private people but markedly little
from organizations which had good connections with the official resistance. The
reason for this was varied from vague insinuations – which still left spoors
today in surprising places – to arguments that people should not bother with
the lot of a single white while so many blacks suffered more and are worse
off.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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The position of the ANC on Breytenbach and Okhela stuck in
the crop of Adriaan van Dis. In an interview with Ischa Meijer van Dis said:
“When Breyten Breytenbach was arrested I was confronted with the reality of
what it meant to wage political struggle and proper journalistic reporting.
Breytenbach was working with members of the ANC at high level. I know this because
I was with him. I was also part of Breytenbach’s illegal group. I attended
meetings in Normandy together with one person who was a member of the ANC
National Executive. When Breytenbach was arrested the ANC denied that he had
anything to do with the ANC. That I could initially understand and accept
because afterall it was compromising for the ANC and for Breytenbach if the ANC
had positioned itself otherwise. But once he was in prison the ANC turned its
back on him and let him rot for seven years. That I hold against them.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Meulenhoff decided while Breytenbach was in jail to publish
his collected work. Especially the book “A season in Paradise’ was well
received by the Dutch public and went into five editions. After his release
from prison Breytenbach visited the Netherlands on numerous occasions and the
political activities and work of the poet got ample coverage in the Dutch
press.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another journalist who was involved with Schuitema during
the time of the affair was the freelancer Wiecher Hulst who published in the
Haagse Post. Hulst developed a friendship with Schuitema but still, in his
first reactions when looking back he Says: “Schuitema betrayed the movement”.
Nevertheless he maintained contact with Schuitema after the stormy meetings in
the AABN: “Berend went to ground. He was accused of treachery. Now and then he
unexpectedly stood at my doorstep, unkempt and a long beard: a sort of drifting
Karl Marx. Often he came to ask for money. He did not have a cent. At that time he gave met Okhela publications.
These he had written himself; confused texts; this while he was always so
bright.” Hulst further has no concrete proof for his conviction that Berend
betrayed Breyten. “Berend himself was unclear about this; he once said, ‘if I
was playing a double game then it was unwitting’. Cees Gloudemans of the
Volkskrant was on the other hand convinced of Berend’s betrayal of Breytenbach.
Berend told that he was visiting Adriaan van Dis when Gloudemans rang the
doorbell. Berend then hid away in a cupboard and only came out once Gloudemans
was away.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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After the Okhela affaire the AABN was on the ropes for a
considerable number of years. On the 30<sup>th</sup> August 1977 Kier Schuringa
wrote and internal memo. “As I see it, the functioning of the movement is
characterized by the almost total lack of structured discussion to determine
the political line of the movement, with regard developments inside South Africa
and the situation in the Netherlands”. Schuringa listed six factors which
resulted on the incapacity of the AABN:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->-<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-size: 7pt;"></span><!--[endif]-->fi firstly, the political situation in the
Netherlands; <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->secondly the diplomatic offensive of Western
countries regarding South Africa; <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->thirdly the repression and propaganda campaign
against the ANC in South Africa;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->fourthly the cooperation potential with the
Medical Committee Angola; <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->fifthly the changing situation of the Angola
Committee, and in less degree, of the BOA;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->And sixthly, the Lack of new action initiatives.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Schuringa concluded: “the continuance of these 6 factors
will have serious consequences for the position of the AABN. This is not to say
that with the persistence of this situation in the next year or two that we
will find ourselves in the margins of South African events” <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-71354484672049034912014-07-04T07:34:00.000-07:002014-07-05T01:05:32.226-07:00Mineworkers: a forgotten people <div class="MsoNormal">
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<img alt="" height="480" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfa1/t1.0-9/421355_10150782042044778_487731614_n.jpg" title="Ex-miners home meeting Nxaruni" width="640" /><br />
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<b>Amathole Ex-miners association home meeting, Nxaruni group.</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Digging for Development: The mining industry in South Africa</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">and its role in socio-economic development </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">2014</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">FRANS CRONJE</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Editor-in-chief</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">JOHN KANE-BERMAN</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">LERATO MOLOI</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Editors</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">TAMARA DIMANT</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">LERATO MOLOI</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">CATHERINE SCHULZE</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">BOITUMELO SETHLATSWE</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Researchers</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">(The ex-Mineworkers Association of Amathole)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the Embassy of Sweden.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the South African Institute of Race</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Relations and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the Embassy</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">of Sweden.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Once the IRR staff were able to get beyond the
arguments about mining policy, ownership, resource prices, and the like, the
true nature and socio-economic conditions of people who work in the mining industry
became obvious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><i>Mineworkers, a forgotten people</i>, t</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">he fifth chapter reports the results of the IRR’s interviews with mineworkers in their own hostels, </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">around the infamous ‘mountain’ at Marikana, and in their homes in the Eastern Cape are reported. In </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">almost all cases the mineworkers are interviewed anonymously, very often because they expressed the </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">fear that they would be persecuted for speaking about the industry. In many cases the views expressed </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">by the mineworkers themselves surprised our researchers and at times contradicted those of civil society </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">organisations and trade unions which claimed to speak on their behalf.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"> ..................</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our research team did not rely simply on miners
currently employed in the sector. It went further back and was able to identify
mineworkers who had been employed as far back as 1940. In an interview in the
Eastern Cape, the following story was told to our research team by a group of
mineworkers who had been mostly employed in the mining industry prior to 1994.
They explained how they had been expected to sleep in carved concrete holes
that were meant to operate as bunk beds. They were given only one blanket to
sleep with and had to use their arms as pillows. Our team was told that there
would often be between twenty and forty men in one room. A fire, or <i>imbawula</i>,
would be lit inside the room to provide heat in winter. The doors were never
locked and there was never any security for the miners’ possessions. They were
forced to shower in very large shower rooms. Occasionally the water was hot but
sometimes only cold water was available. It was also explained that at times
there was no water available and that the mineworkers had to go and wash in a
local dam. One mineworker told the story of running away from a mine in Kuruman
in the 1970s because conditions were so bad. He explains that he was caught and
taken back to the mine where, as punishment, he was locked up in a cell which
had been sprayed with water to prevent him from sleeping on its floor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Other miners told stories of how they would be
denied food for indiscipline. When they did eat, the meals were very meagre.
One man explained how they would be typically fed on pumpkin that was unpeeled and
unseeded. This was combined with carrots and pap and mixed with a spade.
Sometimes there were offcuts of meat (the man said on Wednesdays) but this was
rare. The miners were never really sure what type of meat they were eating
because it was so low grade. One man said that the quality of food was so poor
that he wouldn’t feed it to an animal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A man who had been a barman at a mine clubhouse said
he had been able to obtain far more nutritious food including fruit and milk
because of his relatively senior position. However, this applied to only a
select few mineworkers. Our team asked the focus group of former mineworkers
what mining companies could have done differently to improve their
socioeconomic circumstances. Here the answer was unanimous: they felt that they
had worked very hard to build the mining industry but had never been
compensated fairly in terms of wages and benefits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Many miners complained that even where they had
wages deducted for things such as unemployment insurance, they were never paid out
for those deductions after they left their mining jobs.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A particularly powerful insight into the nature of
the mining industry prior to 1994 came when it was explained to our team how
mineworkers had been trained. It was explained that the workers had to play a
game called <i>umlabalaba </i>to test their cognitive skills. They also had to
do ‘heat tests’ and the like and, depending on how they performed, would be
assigned to certain jobs on the mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On the question of trade unions, it was explained to
us that mineworkers of the 1960s and prior years had never heard of such a
thing while those of the 1970s associated trade unions with white people only.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Those employed later than the 1980s said that they
knew of the NUM, for example, but that they had very little confidence in it or
in trade unions in general. When pushed for an answer as to why they had so
little confidence in trade unions they responded that, despite paying dues and
being members of unions, mineworkers had continued to lose their jobs. This
lack of faith in mining unions was a point thatour team picked up on during
interviews it did at Lonmin’s Marikana mine. Here it was explained to us that
the NUM does not appear to have the interests of mineworkers at heart. It was
also explained that AMCU listens and reports back to workers after a meeting
and takes their interests seriously, whereas the NUM does not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On the question of second families, which is a point
that had been highlighted for us by the other three sectors mentioned in this
report, the mineworkers and their families who were interviewed in the Eastern Cape
said that this is a relatively new phenomenon that affects younger mineworkers.
Those who mined prior to 1994 experienced such harsh restriction on their
movements such that there was little chance for them to establish relationships
with women outside of the mine compounds. They also explained to us that their
wages would often be retained by the then migrant recruiting company, The
Employment Bureau of Africa (TEBA), until they had completed their contracts.
They would thus have had no financial means with which to support a second
family. The miners also said that in the old days they would resist being
“swallowed by Gauteng” and that when they had completed their contracts or
saved enough money they would go home to support their families.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Circumstances in the post-1994 era do appear to have
improved appreciably from those prior to 1994.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For example, during our team’s (unauthorised) visit
to one of Lonmin’s mining hostels we were able to walk around freely and see
the current living conditions for ourselves. Here, a very different picture greeted
us to that of the concrete bunks and cold water showers that had characterised
much of the mining industry in decades past. Our staff observed accommodation
that, while not attractive, was relatively clean, safe, and comfortable. In
some cases we observed mineworkers living in rooms that housed up to nine men,
showing that, although living conditions have largely improved, hostel-style accommodation
is still widespread. Our team also made its way into the men’s bathrooms, which
they described as unpleasant and not as clean as the sleeping quarters.
According to one team member the circumstances in those bathrooms were “grim”:
there were no doors on any of the toilet and shower cubicles, and it appeared
as if the facility hadn’t been properly cleaned or maintained in a long time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">One mineworker we interviewed at Marikana explained
that he was a twenty-year veteran of the mining industry. He had suffered a serious
injury but had been placed by the mine in a less physical position. He said he
receives a livingout allowance of R1 900 a month and has chosen to live in a
shack with his family — a wife (who is unemployed) and four children. In an
average month he spends up to R2 000 on groceries and a further R1 000 to
ensure that his children get to school. He explained that he receives a medical
aid package for which he pays R600 a month and that this allows him full cover
at the local mining hospital and three further doctor’s visits a year. This cover
relates only to him. He earns a salary of R8 000 a month before tax, inclusive
of his living-out allowance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A second mineworker told a similar story. He earns
approximately R5 000 a month. He sends R3 000 of this money home to support his
wife and three children in the Eastern Cape. His wife is unemployed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our team sought to gain an insight into how hard it
is for a man like this to live in a place like Marikana.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He explained that for breakfast he typically eats
porridge and six slices of bread, for lunch pap and gravy, and the same for
dinner. Meat and vegetables are limited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A third mineworker, a rock drill operator, earns R6
000 a month after deductions, which include R1 950 a month for his accommodation,
transport, and food. Mineworkers who live in the hostels receive R950 worth of
food coupons for the month, which typically only last for two weeks, forcing
them to spend more money to supplement their meals. It was explained that three
secure meals a day for the month would be preferred to the current coupon
system. The mineworker in question is
from Mpumalanga, where he has a wife and two children. He is a resident in the
single-sex quarters of the mine and explained that no one is happy to live
there. He is currently on a waiting list to get into the mine’s family units
but he said access to such units depends on how long you have been employed at
the mine. There was also the suggestion, although we were never able to verify
this point, that there is a certain degree of corruption at play and that
mineworkers have to bribe someone in order to get access to better
accommodation, namely the family units.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our research team also saw a number of the coveted
family units. Here they interviewed a female miner. She explained that she
lives in the family unit with her husband and two children. Her husband also works
on the mine. The circumstances in these family units are vastly different from
those in the singlesex quarters. In the case of this specific family, for
example, the two-bedroom unit was furnished with a satellite television
decoder, a television, an exercise bike, a fridge, and a washing machine. It
also had a bathroom, consisting of a toilet and bathtub.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our team interviewed a second family, from
Mozambique, which was also housed in one of the family units. The circumstances
were again quite pleasant and the man in question lived there with his wife and
young child.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">An insight our team was able to gain was that the
circumstances of miners vary considerably both over time and within the same
mine. The harsh environment of the mining dormitories we observed was very
different to the upscale and pleasing environment of the family units we were
able to observe. Commentary on the socio-economic circumstances of mineworkers
is therefore complex. It is very obvious from our investigations, both in the
Eastern Cape and on the mines themselves, that a ‘one explanation fits all’
approach is to greatly oversimplify the questions this report is trying to answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If the family units we observed are the future of
the South African mining industry then that industry is to be congratulated
because very little fault can be found in providing that level of quality
accommodation for one’s work force. However, it remains the case that such
accommodation applies to a minority of mineworkers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our team also visited shack settlements on the
outskirts of mines in the North West. Here, we interviewed mineworkers who live
in truly appalling circumstances. For example, not all shacks are connected to
taps with running water. We were told by one man that a fee of R800 is
necessary to get the local municipality to install a tap near his shack.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064505728703304397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1909805519528272594.post-25332076031101402532014-05-26T01:56:00.001-07:002015-02-15T21:11:42.776-08:00History of the Dutch AAM 1960 - 1990<div style="text-align: center;">
<h2>
<img height="568" src="https://scontent-a-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/198514_10150242776814778_3972658_n.jpg?oh=8754d7bbb84ffd570d41a0e08674cb19&oe=553973C5" width="640" /><b><i>Berend Schuitema</i></b></h2>
</div>
<br />
ACADEMIC THESIS<br />
<br />
for a Doctorate Degree at the University of Amsterdam<br />
30th September 2013<br />
<br />
by<br />
<br />
Roeland Willem Anton Muskens<br />
<br />
<br />
Summary<br />
<br />
<i><b>Interalia: " In the mid seventies, the AABN faced the biggest crisis in its existence when its founder, South African </b></i><i><b>Berend Schuitema, together with other members of the AABN joined the South African writer Breyten </b></i><i><b>Breytenbach in his Okhela initiative. Okhela aimed to establish a white anti-apartheid resistance </b></i><i><b>movement within South Africa. Okhela exploded when Breytenbach was arrested in South Africa and </b></i><i><b>Schuitema only just escaped arrest. The Okhela-initiative was subsequently disavowed by the </b></i><i><b>ANC/SACP-leadership and Schuitema was forced to leave the AABN. His former girlfriend Conny </b></i><i><b>Braam took over as the organisation’s driving force."</b></i><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
From the protests in Amsterdam in 1960 following the Sharpeville massacre up to the campaign in<br />
1994 to support the transition towards democracy; for over thirty years the Dutch anti-apartheid<br />
movement managed to involve the Dutch public with the situation in South Africa. During this period, the sentiments in the Netherlands shifted from strong feelings of kinship with the ‘Boers’ to shame and indignation about the apartheid system. That a large and growing number of the Dutch public felt connected to what was happening in South Africa and became willing to act upon this engagement, could well be considered the biggest accomplishment of the movement. The anti-apartheid movement was probably the most successful social movement in post-war Dutch history. It was responsible for nearly toppling three Dutch governments; changed the business practice of dozens of companies; changed the consumption patterns of the Dutch public; unified the nation behind an African freedom fighter; and changed the political discourse of a whole generation. The anti-apartheid movement was part of the ‘wave of protest’ that flooded the Netherlands (and other countries) between the fifties and the eighties.<br />
<br />
The question that this book sets out to answer is: how and to what extent did the Dutch anti-apartheid<br />
movement succeed in mobilising the Dutch public and changing the Dutch governmental and non-governmental policies regarding South Africa? It tells the story of the movement over a period of thirty years: three decades during which several hundreds of organisations and initiatives were started, in which many thousands of people actively participated, and which succeeded to mobilise hundreds of thousands of citizens and unify millions. While describing the movement’s history between 1960 and 1990, I try to explain why certain organisations were successful at certain times to mobilise the Dutch public and government - and why others were not. The movement is portrayed through the seven national organisations that shaped it over the years: het Comité Zuid-Afrika (South Africa Committee, CZA), de Boycot Outspan Actie (Boycott Outspan Action, BOA), de Anti-Apartheidsbeweging Nederland (Anti-Apartheid Movement Netherlands, AABN), the Working Group Kairos, the coalition for an oil boycott and against Shell, het Komitee Zuidelijk Afrika (Holland Committee on Southern Africa, KZA) and the radical ‘autonomous’ movement against apartheid. The analysis of their relative success is summarised in the final chapter using a matrix, which awards scores to each of the seven organisations for the extent to which they succeeded in 1. Mobilising the public and 2. Changing Dutch policies (of both governments and non-governmental entities).<br />
<br />
The introductory chapter discusses some of the inevitable limitations of researching social movements.The first difficulty is the fact that the boundaries between the movement itself and its target(s) are often fluid. This was also the case with the Dutch anti-apartheid movement. Governmental institutions and certain non-governmental entities (e.g. churches and trade unions) were targeted by the anti-apartheid movement at some time times, while at other times and on certain issues they acted as part of the movement. Even certain companies – once they had decided to boycott South Africa – can be considered part of the movement that had first targeted them.<br />
<br />
Another limitation in researching the success of an internationally focussed movement like the anti-apartheid movement is the matter of goals, sub-goals (or intermediary goals), instrumental goals and means. The ultimate goal of the movement – abolishing apartheid and the establishment of a<br />
democratic system – was to a large extent outside the movement’s sphere of influence. That is why<br />
most of its actions targeted sub-goals (which could be said to equal means): a boycott of South African products, an oil embargo, disinvestment, etcetera. Informing and mobilising the Dutch public was an explicit goal of most anti-apartheid organisations. This was usually part of a two-step strategy: trying to mobilise the Dutch public in order to pressure governments and big companies to change their policies towards South Africa. The organisations also dedicated time and energy to ‘institutional goals’ such as strengthening the internal organisation, building up a documentation centre, or ensuring funding and financial accountability.<br />
<br />
Measuring success is another problem in social movement research. While it may be relatively easy to measure an organisation’s success in reaching intermediary goals (e.g. the banning of certain South<br />
African products or the successful organisation of a protest rally), it is notoriously difficult to verify its success in changing government policies. Attribution is at stake: if policies are changed in line with the demands of action groups, how can we establish whether or to what extent this happened as a result of their actions? How success is measured in this study is explained in the introductory chapter.<br />
<br />
A complicating factor for the movement as a whole, was that the goal of influencing the Dutch policies towards South Africa meant interfering in the government’s foreign policy. The possibilities of non-state actors to influence a state’s foreign policy are historically limited. International policies are to a large extent shaped by international treaties, trade relations, allies and more in general the position of a country within the world order. For the anti-apartheid activists it was highly frustrating that the Dutch government, during the bigger part of those thirty years, was so concerned about the international position of the Netherlands that it paid little heed to the internal pressure generated by the movement.<br />
<br />
After a sketch of South African history between the arrival in 1652 of the Dutch colonizer Jan van<br />
Riebeeck and the year of the Sharpeville massacre (1960), the heart of this book consists of seven<br />
chapters that each discuss one of the main organisations of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement.<br />
The South Africa Committee was established just weeks before the Sharpeville massacre. It existed<br />
for a little more than ten years and during that time mainly tried to influence government policies. The board of the CZA consisted of representatives from the entire political spectrum, only excluding the far left (and of course the political currents that agreed with apartheid). In order to gain influence, the CZA tried to incorporate the Dutch political elite. The CZA wrote letters to parliament and to Dutch organisations that had connections with South Africa. It also published a magazine about what was happening in South Africa and the response of Dutch society to this. The broad political consensus the<br />
<br />
Committee sought, prohibited a radical position towards developments in South Africa, the freedom<br />
struggle and the Dutch response to these developments. At one time the CZA organised a boycott<br />
action of South African fruit, but this failed to have real impact. A fundraising event for the<br />
international Defence and Aid Fund (DAF), which the CZA organised together with some Dutch<br />
writers, was successful and led to the establishment of a Dutch ‘chapter’ of DAF, the DAFN. This<br />
organisation existed until 1993 and succeeded in raising millions of guilders for South African political prisoners and their families. More radical and inventive action models were rejected by the CZA. The majority of its members did not wish to follow the example of the provocative actions of the Dutch Angola Committee, nor were the ‘gentlemen’ of the CZA inspired by the anti-establishment sentiments overrunning the country in the sixties. The non-radical attitude of the Committee irritated some young people linked to the organisation, but they were unable to change its course. In 1972, the CZA was shut down and its activities were taken over by a new, much more inspired group of people that set up a new organisation: the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement. The overall success of the CZA in mobilising Dutch society and influencing Dutch policies was limited. What the committee did do was pave the way for future actions. It helped to put apartheid and the Dutch response to it on the political agenda.<br />
<br />
The Boycott Outspan Action was responsible for one of the biggest single successes of the Dutch<br />
anti-apartheid movement: within a couple of years it managed to ban Outspan fruit from nearly all<br />
Dutch supermarkets. For a large part of the Dutch population Outspan became synonymous with<br />
apartheid and a symbol of oppression in South Africa. The iconic poster depicting the head of a black<br />
boy being squeezed on a juicer certainly contributed to the visibility and success of BOA, as did the<br />
fact that the boycott action made it possible for the average Dutch person to do something tangible, and easy in everyday life, about South African apartheid. Outspan was an enemy that could be fought close to home; and the weapon of a boycott struck to the heart of apartheid. After this success, BOA tried to establish and extend a network of local action groups. The people behind BOA, and especially its driving force, South African refugee Esau du Plessis, analysed that anti-apartheid actions had little meaning if the Dutch public was not aware of the existing, veiled racism in Dutch society. Raising awareness about racism at home became the starting point for BOA activities in the eighties. While the success of these locally based actions was rather limited, the local groups did come to serve as a highly useful vehicle for the dissemination of other anti-apartheid initiatives.<br />
<br />
The Anti-Apartheid Movement Netherlands was the unofficial mouthpiece of the ANC in the<br />
Netherlands (certainly until 1976 when the rivalling Holland Committee on Southern Africa was<br />
formed). The access that the AABN had to the ANC, and the close relationship between members of<br />
the AABN and especially ANC-leaders in London, made the organisation a relevant factor in Dutch<br />
anti-apartheid policy making. The AABN also played a leading role in the ‘branding’ of the ANC and<br />
its leader Nelson Mandela in the Netherlands. The introduction of the ANC as a legitimate<br />
representative of the South African people meant that from then on the Dutch public not only knew<br />
what to fight against, but also what to fight for. Taking over from the ‘bourgeois’ South Africa<br />
Committee, the AABN was a breath of fresh air. It immediately made a name for itself with<br />
provocative actions against a South African water polo team that toured the Netherlands. On another<br />
occasion it searched the garbage containers outside an Amsterdam-based tobacco company, finding<br />
evidence to prove that this company was breaking the mandatory embargo of Rhodesia. These types of actions were new to the movement. Later on, the AABN was innovative in incorporating well-known Dutch artists, media personalities and famous sportsmen into the anti-apartheid struggle. This helped to build up the trustworthiness of the anti-apartheid movement. Other than the CZA and BOA, the AABN was very much a politically profiled organisation. A majority of the people at the AABN-bureau were members of the Dutch Communist Party (CPN). They maintained strong relations with the section of the London-based ANC-leadership that belonged to the South African Communist Party. Contrary to popular rumours, however, there were only sporadic direct contacts between the AABN and the CPN: the AABN cannot be equalled to a CPN front organisation. The AABN was influenced, but not controlled by the CPN. The communist tendency of the AABN, however, limited the possibilities of the organisation to lobby the Dutch government. Although the AABN made sure to always include representatives of other political backgrounds in its board and committees, the department of Foreign Affairs never failed to perceive the AABN as a communist-dominated organisation. Cold war sentiments and ideological differences also hampered close cooperation between the AABN and other organisations both within and outside the anti-apartheid movement.<br />
<br />
In the mid seventies, the AABN faced the biggest crisis in its existence when its founder, South African Berend Schuitema, together with other members of the AABN joined the South African writer Breyten Breytenbach in his Okhela initiative. Okhela aimed to establish a white anti-apartheid resistance movement within South Africa. Okhela exploded when Breytenbach was arrested in South Africa and Schuitema only just escaped arrest. The Okhela-initiative was subsequently disavowed by the ANC/SACP-leadership and Schuitema was forced to leave the AABN. His former girlfriend Conny Braam took over as the organisation’s driving force.<br />
<br />
The AABN deviated from the strategy followed by most of the other anti-apartheid organisations<br />
insofar as it was against boycotting individual companies and against consumer boycotts. The boycott<br />
of South Africa had to be total and all-inclusive. The AABN thus flatly refused to cooperate with the<br />
Outspan boycott (initiated in roughly the same period as the start-up of the AABN) and later on also<br />
opposed, albeit not openly, the boycott of Shell. The AABN thought it unfair that individual<br />
shopkeepers or petrol stations should face the negative consequences of actions. The AABN was at the same time important in mapping the Dutch economic, cultural and military collaboration with South Africa, and in protesting against these relations.<br />
<br />
In the second half of the eighties, the AABN organised several big manifestations that focussed on a<br />
new, post-apartheid South Africa. The manifestation ‘Culture in Another South Africa’ introduced the Dutch public to South African musicians, poets, writers and painters. It also strengthened the<br />
connection between Dutch activists and South Africans other than the exiled ANC community. As a<br />
result, the strong ties between the ANC and the AABN were somewhat loosened, which allowed the<br />
AABN a more critical stance towards the freedom movement. In the same period, AABN chairperson<br />
Conny Braam was requested by SACP-leader Ronny Kasrils to set up safe houses in the countries<br />
bordering South Africa. That was the start of the secret Vula network in which dozens of Dutch<br />
persons cooperated. After the transition towards democracy in South Africa and the formation of a nonracist government, the AABN festively discontinued its activities.<br />
<br />
The Working Group Kairos was formed on request of the South African clergyman and director of<br />
the Christian Institute, Christiaan Beyers Naudé. Especially in the sixties and seventies the churches in the Netherlands were struggling to determine their standpoint regarding apartheid. Anti-racist<br />
sentiments were gaining ground, but the feelings of kinship and theological connectedness with white<br />
South Africa were strong, particularly among the Dutch reformed churches. Working Group Kairos<br />
was founded to rally support for the Christian Institute and to convince the church leadership to<br />
denounce apartheid. After a call by the World Council of Churches, Kairos also started a campaign for disinvestment and to pressure Dutch companies to sever their relations with South Africa. Others<br />
questioned whether instead of withdrawing from South Africa companies should not rather stay and set the right example by providing a non-racist, just and fair working environment for their employees (the so-called Polaroid method). For a while this discussion also divided Kairos, but eventually the organisation chose to follow the call of the World Council. Individuals and groups around Kairos started initiatives and organisations like ‘Betaald Antwoord’ (Paid Response) and ‘Steunt Uw Geld Apartheid?’ (Does Your Money Support Apartheid?).<br />
<br />
A campaign in the seventies, which included a consumer boycott, led to clear policy changes by two of the biggest banks in the Netherlands. The call for disinvestment was also the starting point of the<br />
campaign for an oil embargo and the pressure on the Dutch/British oil company Shell. Representatives of Kairos and the churches engaged in a dialogue with Shell, but did not succeed in changing the Shell policies regarding South Africa. With its roots in the Dutch religious arena, Kairos was a key factor in reaching the political centre, and particularly the Christian Democratic Party, CDA. The political centre was vital in obtaining the majority needed for policy changes. During the seventies and eighties, Kairos tried to get churches, religious groups, the Christian Labour Union and other religiously inspired groups behind the demands of the anti-apartheid movement and behind the demands of South African resistance groups. Kairos seldom engaged in spectacular actions, and therefore was not very well known among the Dutch public. Its strength was its profile as a serious and trustworthy organisation that presented solid information about developments in South Africa. Besides its participation in the oil boycott, Kairos campaigned intensively for the release of political prisoners in South Africa and was the driving force behind efforts to realise a Dutch boycott of South African coal.<br />
<br />
The coalition for an oil boycott and against Shell was the most long lasting and probably the most<br />
publicised anti-apartheid campaign in the Netherlands. The roots of the campaign lie with Working<br />
Group Kairos. In the early seventies, Kairos started the protest activities at the annual shareholder<br />
meetings of Shell, an action model that was continued until 1990. Kairos also engaged in a dialogue<br />
with Shell. After the transformation of the former Angola Committee into the Holland Committee on<br />
Southern Africa (KZA), this organisation led by Sietse Bosgra joined forces with Kairos in the fight for an oil embargo. Later on, development organisation Novib and the Catholic peace movement Pax<br />
Christi joined the partnership. The coalition had some strong trump cards. Firstly, excellent contact was established with leading parliamentarians of both the Social and Christian Democrats. Especially<br />
Christian democrat MP Jan Nico Scholten was instrumental in conveying the message of the anti-apartheid movement in parliament. The Second Chamber adopted a motion for a unilateral Dutch oil<br />
embargo, but the government refused to execute the motion. A consequential motion of no confidence however, did not make it, by two votes. A majority of the Christian democratic MP’s did not think the struggle against apartheid was worth a cabinet crisis. A new chance to get a majority of parliament behind an oil embargo did not materialise. Another trump card of the coalition were the solid data on oil shipments gathered by the Shipping Research Bureau. Oil companies could no longer simply deny doing business with South Africa, but had to resort to complicated and often not very trustworthy explanations for their business with apartheid. In the end, however, the ultimate goal of the coalition - a unilateral Dutch oil embargo against South Africa - was not achieved. In the second half of the eighties, its focus shifted from campaigning for a national oil embargo to a campaign against Shell and for a consumer boycott of the Dutch/British oil company. The international contacts were intensified, but a truly international campaign against Shell was never accomplished. Shell never gave in to the demands of the anti-apartheid movement, but in the end shifted its alliance from the white apartheid government to the ANC-leadership. The actions against Shell and the consumer boycott got huge support from the Dutch public. Actions to put pressure on Shell were initiated in numerous towns in the Netherlands.<br />
<br />
Shell lost a lot of goodwill among the Dutch audience for its stubborn defence of its South African<br />
business. It even commissioned a PR-company to design a strategy to neutralise the attacks of the<br />
protesters. In the second half of the eighties, the actions of the coalition against Shell became less<br />
visible, as the attention of the media and the public shifted towards the violent attacks on Shell filling<br />
stations and other installations executed by the radical ‘autonomous’ movement.<br />
<br />
The Holland Committee on Southern Africa (KZA) was the successor of the Angola Committee,<br />
renamed after Angola and other Portuguese colonies in Africa gained independence in 1976. The<br />
arrival of this new, national organisation within the anti-apartheid movement irritated the AABN. KZA was perceived as a rival: targeting the same audience and courting the same ‘bride’, that is the<br />
liberation movement ANC. Furthermore, the KZA was better organised and better equipped than the<br />
AABN. The Angola Committee had ample experience in targeting a diverse audience, proved with its<br />
very successful consumer boycott of Angolan coffee. There were also ideological differences between the KZA and the AABN. The AABN was influenced by the Moscow-oriented Dutch Communist Party, whereas the leader of KZA, Sietse Bosgra, was one of the founders of the Pacifist Socialistic Party and a staunch opponent of Moscow. KZA strategy was to combine political action and lobbying with providing material aid to the ANC. This combination was very successful: fundraising for the ANC proved to be an easy entry level for people to become committed on a more political level. Once people had given money to the anti-apartheid struggle, they were easily persuaded to do more. Being involved in giving material aid also ensured strong contacts with the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs: KZA started to function as a co-financing agency to channel government funds to ANC refugees and the ANC headquarters in Lusaka. Later KZA became one of the instigators (and managers) of the large-scale European aid to victims of apartheid and South African opposition groups. KZA was also the driving force behind some of the most successful actions of the movement, such as the actions against the selling of Krugerrand gold coins, the international year of UN-sanctions, the boycott of South African products in supermarkets, or the actions against the travel industry selling trips to South Africa.<br />
<br />
KZA was well organised, and well financed. It followed a strategy of ‘out-placing’ some of its<br />
activities, making the organisation itself simple and straightforward. Among the ‘satellite’<br />
organisations were the clipping service ‘Facts & Reports’, the Shipping Research Bureau (SRB) and the Foundation Year of Sanctions (Stichting Sanctiejaar). One of its success factors was that the KZA served as a source of unique information: in the eighties it developed into a major and trusted<br />
mouthpiece of the ANC towards the Dutch public and the political arena; the clipping service Facts and Reports provided unique information about developments in South Africa and the frontline states; the information the SRB provided also strengthened the image of the KZA as an organisation that knew what it was talking about.<br />
<br />
The radical ‘autonomous’ movement against apartheid. At a time when the Dutch anti-apartheid<br />
movement was somewhat deadlocked, the radical autonomous movement, originating from the squatter movement of Amsterdam and other major cities, managed to revitalise the struggle with some controversial but spectacular actions. The biggest ‘achievement’ of the radical movement was perhaps the fact that the Dutch multinational SHV decided to withdraw from South Africa after several of its Makro retail shops were set on fire. Several other Dutch companies too decided to sever their relations with South Africa out of fear of the threats of the autonomous movement. This ‘success’ can partly be explained by the earlier mobilisation work done by the conventional anti-apartheid organisations. Companies that were confronted with destruction of their properties couldn’t count on much public sympathy. Even the Dutch government refused to stand by SHV when it was on the verge of giving in to the threats of the autonomous movement.<br />
<br />
The radical and destructive nature of many of the actions of the autonomous movement ensured lots of media attention. The downside was that this attention focussed on the violence rather than on the goal of the actions (i.e. the fight against apartheid). An unintended by-product of these violent actions was that the demands of the more moderate anti-apartheid organisations came to be taken much more<br />
seriously. Companies worried that refusing to give in to the demands of organisations such as KZA or<br />
the AABN would lead to destructive actions by the autonomous movement.<br />
<br />
The autonomous movement was anything but a unified organisation, even though the different groups<br />
rarely criticised each other openly. The RARA-group (responsible for the most destructive assaults)<br />
was driven by an anti-imperialist ideology: the anti-apartheid struggle was no more than a frontline in<br />
the war against imperialism and global capitalism. On the other end of the continuum were the<br />
‘realo’s’: people with loosely defined anarchist sympathies, sometimes united into small ad hoc groups,campaigning about a wide range of issues of which apartheid was one. The realo’s made a name for themselves when they organised the blockade of the Shell laboratory in April 1989. The main strategy and goal of this blockade was to inflict damage to the image of Shell. The blockade was unique in the sense that it involved the cooperation between the radical movement and the more moderate anti-apartheid groups in the Netherlands.<br />
<br />
The radical ‘autonomous’ movement against apartheid is in a way the odd one out, both in the anti-apartheid movement and in the theoretical assumptions that have guided this research. In fact, its<br />
accomplishments defy the assumption that the ability to influence government policies is the result of<br />
mobilising the public opinion. The autonomous movement did not contribute to the mobilisation of the public; a considerable part of the Dutch public was repelled by its actions. Nevertheless the<br />
autonomous movement was responsible for some distinct successes in the Dutch struggle against<br />
apartheid.<br />
<br />
In the concluding chapter the ‘pillarised’ character of the anti-apartheid movement is sketched.<br />
Pillarisation (verzuiling) refers to the typical ‘vertical’ organising principle of the Dutch socio-political system: Dutch society was traditionally divided into three or four pillars (catholic, protestant, socialist and liberal) each with their own social structure, organisations and leadership. This system of pillarisation lasted until the nineteen seventies, and remnants of this system still exist in the current<br />
Dutch society. The different anti-apartheid organisations loosely fitted into this system. A notable<br />
difference, however, was that normally the elites representing the different pillars of Dutch society<br />
worked together and formed coalitions while ideological differences were more apparent and fought<br />
out at the bottom of the pillars. The anti-apartheid movement showed a different, reversed picture: the<br />
‘rank and file’ at the bottom of the pillars had no problem in working together with others in the<br />
struggle against apartheid, but ideological (and personal) differences divided the leadership of the antiapartheid organisations.<br />
<br />
The pillarisation of the movement was both an advantage and a disadvantage. An obvious disadvantage was that organisations often collided or failed to synchronise their actions. Negotiations about shared statements sometimes dragged on for months. The differences between the organisations were often hard to explain to the public (and to funding entities). An undeniable advantage was that the organisations could each count on their own constituency and approach it in a way that was understood and deemed appropriate. It is also fair to conclude that the rivalry made the anti-apartheid organisations alert and sharp.<br />
<br />
The anti-apartheid movement succeeded in mobilising a significant part of the Dutch public in the<br />
struggle against apartheid. The issue of apartheid dominated the Dutch political agenda for many years. The main strategy of the movement (i.e. building political strength by mobilising public opinion and so enforcing changes in the Dutch policies regarding South Africa) was to a certain extent successful. The movement scored some major victories (often as a result of consumer boycotts): Outspan fruit, Krugerrands, Cape wines, the stop on Dutch migration towards South Africa, the cultural boycott, the sports boycott, the academic boycott and the retreat of several companies from South Africa. From the eighties onwards it was simply considered not done for a Dutch individual, organisation or company to do business with South Africa. Those who defied the demands of the movement had a hard time explaining themselves and faced substantial reputation damage. In short: the movement was very successful in mobilising public opinion and changing the policies of non-state actors. The Dutch government on the other hand remained reluctant to change its policies regarding South Africa. The Netherlands never boycotted South African coal, never outlawed investing in South Africa, never banned the air traffic between the Netherlands and South Africa, and did not follow the (voluntary) UN-imposed oil embargo. It also implemented only a limited interpretation of the arms embargo that the UN imposed. In some cases the Netherlands even benefited economically from embargoes that other countries imposed on South Africa! All in all, the Dutch government succeeded in turning a blind eye to the demands of the anti-apartheid movement. ‘Bold’ unilateral actions of the Dutch government were entirely lacking. The Netherlands generally followed the pace of the slowest of its allies (though it did on some occasions try to persuade the international community to take bigger steps). Commercial interests usually outweighed moral considerations. The most commonly used argument not to engage in boycotting South Africa was that such actions would not have the desired effect, and would actually reinforce the ‘laager mentality’ of the South African Boers. In a way the Dutch advocates and opponents of actions against South Africa were deadlocked between Max Weber’s Gesinnungsethik and Verantwortungsethik: do we take actions because we desire a certain effect or because it is ‘the right thing to do’?<br />
<br />
The concluding chapter touches on the impact of Dutch solidarity on the South African political future. Solidarity for South Africa in the Netherlands was (almost) only addressed to the ANC. Other<br />
opposition forces were largely ignored; in fact, solidarity for others than the ANC was strongly<br />
rejected. Especially through the European Community huge sums of money were channelled to ANC dominated organisations. Little or no support was offered to other opposition groups like Inkatha, the<br />
PAC or even the Democratic Party. One can argue that this has disproportionately affected the political landscape of post-apartheid South Africa.<br />
<br />
Involvement of the Dutch public with the liberation struggle in South Africa was instigated by our<br />
common history with South Africa. But the strongest driver of solidarity was, no doubt, the Dutch<br />
aversion to racism resulting from the experiences of World War II: the deportation and murder of more than 100,000 Dutch Jews, the German occupation of our country, and the racist laws imposed by the Germans. After the war it became more and more clear that not all Dutch citizens had been as active in resisting the Germans as had been claimed. Faced with a choice between black and white, a majority opted for shades of grey. Especially since the seventies the moral question of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’permeated Dutch social discourses, and World War II was usually the litmus test. The strength of the anti-apartheid movement was that it offered the Dutch public concrete ways and options to position themselves on the ‘right’ side in this, new, struggle between good and evil. It was after all a small step from ‘für Juden verboten’ to ‘slegs vir blankes’. The anti-apartheid movement made it clear that this time, in the choice between good and evil, there would be no room for nuance. Different than with World War II, the fight against apartheid did not end with a clear-cut victory over the enemy. Before the movement could really show its teeth, the enemy gave in. The change that had been hoped for came from ‘the other side’, and the president of the detested apartheid state was even rewarded a Nobel Peace Prize. And Shell too miraculously turned up on the ‘right’ side. Politicians who, a little while before, had qualified Mandela and the ANC as terrorists, ended up jostling to have their picture taken with ‘Madiba’ during his visit to the Netherlands. The real anti-apartheid activists were pushed to the fringe of the Amsterdam stage. In this war too, so we were to believe, everybody had been part of the resistance.<br />
<br />
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