Spotlight On: South African Apartheid

4 more copies please

J.M

C O P Y

THE RUMBLES OF A VOLCANO

The  present violent clashes at Paarl, Qamata and Queenstown [Komani] must be looked at in their proper perspective. They are a writing on the wall. A sharp and clear warning to the oppressors that the volcano they have been poking for years is about to erupt and it will involve every South African, black and white.

It is futile to try, as the Government is [doing] to lay the blame on a few mischief makers, and to pretend that the problem can be solved by mopping up operations in which Africans are shot, arrested and even ultimately hanged. This approach is superficial and dangerous it merely intensifies the very methods against which the people are revolting.

THE PEOPLES’ LIFE IS A LIVING HELL

The roots of the clashes in which Africans have in these areas been driven to face the superior armed forces of the Government in pitched battles when they knew that the odds were heavily against them and their casualties would be higher lie not in so-called barbarous cathtaking [?] but in the barbarous and brutal policies of the government which has made the lives of our people a living hell.

The supporters of white domination have consistently been warned that their brutal denial of rights to our people, their contemptuous dismissal of the peoples’ demands, the evergrowing harassing of our people, the ruthless suppression of their political organisations and activity and to crown it all the complete reliance on force and violence against the people, the parading of Saracens [armoured vehicle carriers] and skiet commandoes [shooting commandoes, unit of South African Army & Territorial Reserve], will provoke our people to do that which other people in similar circumstances have done, namely to strike back at the enemy in the way in which it strikes at the people. We warned that oppression with the sword will provoke resistance by the sword.

The whites in the laager [entrenched position or bunker] should not console themselves that in the recent skirmishes the weapons of the Africans were inferior and their casualties higher. Far from being consoled by this they should be alarmed. Nor should they go back to sleep comfortably on the assurances of the police. The whites must realise and the sooner the better- that they have created a situation so intolerable that the Africans are beginning to storm the citadel of white-domination in spite of crude weapons and regardless of the consequences.

The statements of the police that there is no unrest in the Transkei are baseless. There has been unrest in the Transkei for about two years now and a state of emergency hangs over the heads of the people.

We mourn the dead; their blood is dripping from the hands of the insane men who have been put into power by the white electorate.

Unless an immediate halt is called upon this brutal and barbaric experiment on human life by those who support white domination there will be more dead people to mourn for, the conflagration conflict and violence will spread. The volcano will not only rumble but will erupt. The weapons and methods of the Africans will not always be inferior, nor will the casualties be higher amongst the oppressed.

History has taught that when an oppressed people have decided to stake their very lives for freedom, the weakness of the oppressed is only initial and temporary, so is the apparent strength of the oppressor.

The choice is between white domination and white privilege maintained through bloodshed, turmoil  and conflict or Freedom – power to all the people of our country and peace. The time to choose is running out.

Issued by the African National Congress

BRITISH EMBASSY,PRETORIA.

CONFIDENTIAL

10112                                                                                           December 28, 1962.

Dear Forster,

I attach a copy of what purports [appears] to be a pamphlet distributed by the African National Congress (A.N.C.). The original is simply roneod on two sides of a piece of paper. It was lent to us by a reliable journalist in Johannesburg to whom we must return it. We cannot of course, vouch for its authenticity; but it certainly seems all right.

2. The text is very interesting. The A.N.C. do not, of course, go so far as to claim any of the credit for the recent wave of violence in Paarl. But they do not, as they would have a few months ago deplore it. Towards the end of the pamphlet there is a clear threat- “The weapons and methods of the Africans will not always be inferior, nor will the casualties be higher amongst the oppressed”- that the A.N.C. themselves will ensure that in the future the use of violence will be on a higher and more professional scale.
3. It has been generally known for some time that the A.N.C. had definitely abandoned the policy of non-violence. But this is the first public indication which we have seen that they are prepared to give favourable publicity to the use of force.
4. Incidentally, the newspaper which received this pamphlet will not be printing it for fear of legal reprisals; I would be surprised if any of the other papers took this risk.

Yours,

John Longrigg

(J.S. Longrigg)

P.M. Foster, Esq.,

West and Central African Dept.,

Foreign Office

London, S.W.1

CONFIDENTIAL

1963            JWest and Central African Department                       J5A/015/5

SOUTH AFRICA

SUBJECT: The Illegal Opposition Parties in South Africa

MINUTES

…                              Copy sent to Sir B. Stevens

This despatch is a useful round-up on the state of the illegal opposition in South Africa. For practical purposes the only organisations which we need worry very much about are the African National Congress (ANC), the Communist Party (SACP) a number of whose African members are also members of the ANC, and, to a lesser extent the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Sir John Maud has reached the conclusion that the PAC, which originally broke away from the ANC in 1958, is on the wane. It has been a continuing theme in the history the non-European opposition in South Africa that though the ANC has often seemed ineffective and sometimes appeared to be finished, it has nevertheless outlived all its rivals. The real problem is not whether the ANC is going to be the force to be reckoned with in the future- it almost certainly will be, it is rather what sort of force it will become. Will the ANC, when it finally reaches a position of power, be pro-Western or at least benevolently neutral, or will it lean towards the East?

2. Sir John Maud’s analysis, which only goes to reaffirm our existing knowledge, is anything but optimistic. Dr Verwoerd and his government have been following policies precisely calculated to force the African leaders into the arms of the Communists, if only because they have never had [any other] obvious allies. The sharper the repressive measures, the more permanent this shot-gun marriage will become. Over the past two years the position of the Communists has improved in this respect, because the non-Communist Europeans, for example, members of the Liberal Party, have, in the face of the Government’s repressive measures, been edging away from the illegal non-European opposition, thus leaving the field wide open to the Communists.
3. It is true that the government have at the same time made it difficult for the Communist Party to function, many of its leaders being under “house arrest” or other restrictions. It is also true that the Communist Party has no mass following at all and is unlikely to acquire one. It remains a cadre [elite group revolutionary activists] party. But it does not need a mass following of its own if it is able to work in close alliance with the ANC and to influence the latter’s policy at the highest level. This is exactly, alas what is happening.

…For the past 12 months the policy of apartheid has been applied with increasing thoroughness. At the same time the activities of the (now illegal) African opposition parties have been intensified, and they have received overt support from independent African States at the Addis Ababa Conference. Several independent African Countries are known to be training saboteurs from South Africa, and the incident of acts of sabotage in the Republic are particularly high in the closing months of 1962. The operations were carried out with more efficiency and far greater security than previous amateurish attempts, and everything points to the existence of a well-organised cadre of saboteurs, possibly to be identified with the ‘Spear of the Nation’ thought to be a branch of the African National Congress. The early months of 1963 saw increasing activity on behalf of the Pan African Congress and an organisation, probably closely linked with it, called POQO. The latter’s activities are thought to have included the murder of European South Africans at the Paarl Location, and it seems clear that the African opposition in general is moving away from its previous firm stand on non-violence.

However, the South African security forces are at present more than adequate to meet any overt threat, and they seem to have delivered at any rate temporarily crippling blows to the organisation both of the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress, though there is some evidence that the leadership of both could be replaced from the ranks of the exiles in independent African countries. The minister of Defence has mobilised a territorial Citizen Force to help in the maintenance of internal security.

The establishment of an ‘independent’ African state within the Republic, the Transkei, as the first move in a policy of independent African Bantustans, has proved a focus for opposition to the Government’s racial policies and a source of further disturbances. In addition, the use of the High Commissioned Territories by refugees from the Republic to organise subversion has brought threats of reprisals against the Territories by the South African Government, whose economic stronghold on the Territories renders them very vulnerable to such pressure.

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