I, D,A,] News Notes

i, d, a,] news notes Published by the United States Committee of the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa p.o. Box 17, Cambridge, MA 02138 December 1985, Issue No. 24 Telephone (617) 491-8343 people-who would then have the power to put pressure on the regime Dynamics of Resistance to make fundamental changes. This was not nonviolent passive resis tance. The ANC and its allies had a different conception, to bring into A talk by Ben Turok motion thousands and tens of thousands of black people, with some The following is excerpted from a talk given by Mr. Ben Turok on October 21, allies, to defy the system of white supremacy. It was a confrontational 1985, at Coolidge Hall, Harvard University. Before leaving South Africa, Mr. policy, and it was highly successful. Eight thousand people went to Turok was a representative ofthe Cape Provincial Council, National Secretary of prison, but more important than that, hundreds of thousands of Africans the South African Congress ofDemocrats, and amember ofthe African National stood up with dignity and an understanding that this system could only Congress. He was a political prisoner from 1962 to 1965, and left the country in be attacked in a defiant way. 1966. He has worked and taught in Tanzania and Zambia, and is a tenured The problem with the mobilization was that the regime was able to faculty member at Yorkshire University in Britain. counterattack. The mobilization of the '50s was undercut to the point The origin I want to go to in the South African case is the post-war condi where ordinary people began to say that this kind ofANC campaign was tion in Africa. Idon't know to what extent the u.s. was permeated byatti totally ineffective. I can tell you from my personal experience that there tudes of democratic aspiration, but I do know that in Africa as a whole, was atime towards the end ofthe 1950s when ordinary people in Johan and in Europe, the war against Nazi Germany had an enormous impact nesburg began to decline to attend mass meetings of the ANC, on the way people thought about society. The states ofAfrica came to in saying:We don't want leaflets, we want guns:' This was not the view of dependence partly because ofa response to this wave ofpro-democratic the leadership, this was not the view ofan "irresponsible, ultra-revolution feeling: that people have a right to be free, to govem themselves, and that ary, ultra-militant leadership" trying to create chaos. This was the view of colonialism was a bad thing. In South Africa too that mood penetrated the country. Perhaps it was the fear of a democratic upsurge that led to the reaction ofthe coming to "There are so many never-befores!' power of the Malan-led Nationalist Party in 1948. That clearly was a re sponse by the whites which established a new mood in the country. That mood was that white racism must be maintained at all costs, that white supremacy must be maintained, and any argument and discussion of the people. That judgment was made in particular after the Sharpeville democracy as affecting the civil rights ofblack people must be smashed. shooting in 1960 when the police opened fire on 5,000 people in So the national liberation movement of the ANC and other organizations Sharpeville. Many of them were shot in the back, 400 were injured, 69 was faced with a new phenomenon: a govemment which was overtly killed ... I'm sure you know all the facts. committed to fascism, which had during the war taken sides with Hitler In the '60s the ANC had to cope with a new situation in which people and which was impregnated with ideas of law and order, of right-wing were fed up, people were filled with a desire to oppose the regime in a nationalism. more meaningful way than peaceful protest. The ANC took two major The anxieties of the ANC and all the other forces were proven to be decisions. The first was to start the M Plan process. The M Plan was substantiated by the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950, which named after Mandela, who already by then was a very popular figure. It banned the Communist Party and created a new mechanism for exercis was fundamentally a plan to create small cells in the country to operate ing state repression. Although there were many within the ANC leader in a clandestine way, to set up an underground structure which would ship who were anti-Nazi and anti-Communist, nevertheless the ANC carry the struggle forward. joined with the Indian Congress and other anti-Communist parties in At the same time the decision was taken to engage in sabotage. Sabo opposing the Act and in setting in motion an alliance offorces in which tage broke out in 1961 and a new phase began. What was not antici the question of anti-Communism went into the background. It was a pated by the ANC was the enormous repression that would follow. The union of people on the basis of anti-fascism and pro-liberation which is state responded with massive force to sabotage on a very small scale, perhaps quite unique in the world. which was not directed at human life. It was directed at installations of The ANC reacted to the government with a plan of mobilization: the various kinds. Sabotage was meant to be symbolic of the fact that even Defiance Campaign of nonviolent action. I want to underline one aspect a white regime of such strength could be hurt at various points. The of the Defiance Campaign that seems terribly important. That is the rec regime reacted by expanding its Special Branch many-fold, by penetrat ognition that the regime would not bend to change the repressive legisla ing the townships with informants, by buying people at every block to tion which was so fundamental to the question of white supremacy. give information on their neighbors. So a kind of cloud hung over the There was no expectation that the regime would change the pass laws, black people wherever they lived, and the regime seemed to be every for example. The expectation rather was that a mass movement would where. I want you to think about that when you read in the newspaper be built, that mobilization would take place-above all, of the African that people are attacked in the townships, sometimes killed in the most (continued on page 2) Dynamics of Resistance (continued from page 1) horrible way. This is the action of a people who are trying to clean their How do you see the ANCs role today? community of informers and agents. Iwould say that the ANC has had atough time. In the mid'-60s the ANC In the '70s we saw a manifestation of the spontaneous generation of was smashed up very severely. The breakdown of the M Plan was due protest and rebellion by young people who had not been members of solely to the torture in South African prisons, when chains of command the ANC, who had not grown up in the tradition of nonviolent resistance. within the M Plan were opened by people who broke down and gave They had not been led by Chief Luthuli, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, information. Hundreds oftop cadres fled the country, lots ofpeople went who for a large part of his life felt that nonviolence was the way forward. through a period of agonizing reassessment. Then came the incursions They had a new approach, and that was to attack the authorities in the into Angola, then Rhodesia and so on, the first attempts to try to revive only way they could, which was riots. The '70s was a period of spontane the armed struggle. I think a movement must learn from those defeats. ity, aperiod when to a large extent the ANC was not present as asubstan The ANC has had a remarkable record in terms of wise and sophisti tial force. The ANC had been substantially repressed so that it could not cated leadership. The ANC is trying very hard to keep its feet on the then give leadership directly to the people. ground at a moment of history when everything is bursting asunder. We come to the '80s and we find the traditions ofthe struggle in South There are so many never-befores. Never before have so many people Africa converging in a particular way. For example, nonviolent defiance. Allan Boesak led amarch of nonviolent protesters on the prison of Nelson Nlandela. He was arrested and is now going to be charged with treason. "The divestment campaign is creating massive A lot of other people have engaged in this kind of mobilized nonviolent action. Nonviolent action is still on the agenda. problems for the regime:' The mobilization element of the '60s when the ANC began with the M Plan is now being put into place. One can't talk about how large it is but certainly the mobilization of a political clandestine force will in some been killed in action, never before have there been so many explosions way be parallel to and lead the struggle as a whole, and is an essential from Umkhonto we Sizwe. Never before have so many people been ingredient of what is going on now. defiant in the streets. Never before has there been such an international And then we get the spontaneity that weve seen on the television outcry. Never before has the New York Times carried an article every day screen, the extraordinary sight of hundreds and hundreds of young about South Africa.

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