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The Commonwealth Mission Apartheid's Wars 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 August 1986, Issue No. 28 Telephone (617) 491-8343 tospiral? Orwill it take concertedaction of an effective kind? Such The Commonwealth Mission action may offer the last opportunity to avert what could be the worst bloodbath since the Second World War. Prime Minister Thatcher's refusal to act against apartheid at the 1985 Commonwealth summit has led to the most The full text of Mission to South Africa: The Commonwealth Report is trenchant and realistic assessment of the South available from IDAF in paperback for $5.95. African situation ever to come from such solid Establishment figures as a conservative Prime Minis­ ter and an archbishop. They were members of a Commonwealth delegation of seven "Eminent Apartheid's Wars Persons;' led by former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo and former Australian Prime Minister On April 23, 1986, Cavin Evans ofSouth Africa's End Conscription Malcolm Fraser, who tried for six months to persuade Campaign spoke at the Harvard Graduate School ofEducation. Evans the South African government to commit itself to genuine negotiations with the black majority. The was in the US to address the United Nations Special Committee against following are some of their most salient conclusions. Apartheid. We thank the New England War Resisters' League for arranging the talk and allowing us to print the excerpts below. After more than 18 months of persistent Olusegun Obasanjo Myopposition tothe military really started at the age oftwelve, when unrest, upheaval, and killings unprecedented in the country's history, we started our cadet program in school. We had to come to school in the Government believes that it can contain the situation indefinitely by uniform once a week, do drills and learn how to shoot. It seemed like use of force ....Although the Government's confidence may be valid quite a pointless exercise to me, and there was a lot of opposition to it. in the short term, it is plainly misplaced in the long term. South Africa At the moment there are six or seven hundred thousand white is predominantly a country of black people. To believe that they can be schoolboys doing cadet training, and what they're doing now is a lot indefinitely suppressed is an act of self-delusion. more severe than what I had to do. At the school I went to they now do While the Government claims to be ready to negotiate, it is in mock grenade attacks, military maneuvers, camouflage, and they shoot truth not yet prepared to negotiate fundamental change, nor to R-1 assault rifles. We just learned to shoot .22s. In 1976, when students countenancethecreationof genuine democratic structures, nor to protesting against apartheid were gunned down with the army being face the prospect of the end of white domination and white power in the foreseeable future. (continued on page 2) There can be no negotiated settlement in South Africa without the ANC; the breadth of its support is incontestable; and this support is New Books Available from lOAF growing. Among the many striking figures whom we met in the course of our work, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo stand out. Their Nelson Mande/a: The Struggle is My Life (IDAF, 1986, 278 pp., illus.) $6.95 paper, $21.00 hardcover reasonableness, absence of rancour and readiness to find negotiated This new edition of IDAF's popular title includes new material describing solutions which, while creating genuine democratic structures would Mandela's life on Robben Island and in Pollsmoor prison, Cape Town, where he is still give the whites a feeling ofsecurity and participation, impressed us now serving a life sentence. It is the most complete account of Mandela's views and deeply. If the Government finds itself unable to talk with men like his role in the struggle for liberation. Mandela and Tambo, then the future of South Africa is bleak indeed. Brutal Force: The Apartheid War Machine by Gavin Cawthra. (IDAF, 1986, 320 pp., iIIus.) $13.00 paper, $25.00 hardcover Is the Commonwealth tostand by and allow thecycle of violence Brutal Force is a detailed examination of the growing militarization of South Africa, the strength of its military and nuclear forces, and its aggression both at Fifth Annual Walk for Peace home and abroad, from the 5harpeville massacre of 1960 to the 5tate of Emergency in 1985-86.' Sunday, October 26 Apartheid's Private Army: The Rise ofRight-Wing Vigilantes in South Africa by Once again, IDAF is participating in the Walk for Peace, an opportunity for our Nicholas Haysom. (Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1986, 141 pp., iIIus.) Boston-area supporters to raise funds for our work on behalf of political prisoners $5.50 paper and their dependents. The walk is ten kilometers (6.2 miles) long and begins and This book by a 50uth African still living and working there examines the apartheid ends at the Boston Common. This year, 60% of funds received from pledges will regime's use of black mercenaries to attack blacks opposing the regime. It reveals go to IDAF, or whatever group you designate. (The remaining funds go to cover the true nature of much of the "black on black" violence in the ghettos and costs of the Walk, as well as to the Free 50uth Africa Movement and peace and bantustans. justice networks in the Greater Boston area.) 'IDAF also has available South Africa at War: White Power and the Crisis in Brochures on the Walk for Peace are available at our office; please write or call Southern Africa by Richard Leonard. (Lawrence Hill, 1983,280 pp.) $12.50 paper if you would like to receive one. For more information, call IDAF or the Walk for IDAF's 1986-87catalogue is now available. Please write or call for your free Peace at (617) 868-5259. copy. APARTHEID'S WARS continued from page 1 like weve seen in Langa and in Mamelodi, because the police and army used in abackup capacity, it became clear to me that we were actually are instructed to kill. being trained to carry out a civil war against the majority of South This has led to a massive growth in resistance. In 1984, according to Africans. government figures, 1,593 people failed to tum up for military service. The first branches of the End Conscription Campaign were set up at In January 1985, which is half the year's callup, the number rose to the beginning of 1984. We decided we should be a nonracial group, 7,589. A lot of these were people who later got student deferments or working closely with the UDF and more recently with COSATU on the left the country, but there is growing abhorrence for what the army is Troops Out of the Townships campaign. At the moment weve got 52 doing. In January 1986 the government refused to release the figures affiliate organizations: church groups like the SACC and Southern because the ECC would "misuse' them. We have reason to believe African Catholic Bishops Conference, student groups like NUSAS, theres been quite a dramatic increase. religious youth groups like the Young Christian Students, civil rights In our current campaign, called Working for a Just Peace, weve groups, women's groups, and specific issue groups like Koeberg Alert, become involved in community projects under the leadership of black which is opposed to nuclear power. community organizations. In Westem Coloured township, one of the We started by focusing on the issue of Namibia and the troops' poorer townships ofJohannesburg, we've helped run aholiday program occupation ofAngola, and developing links with the Namibian Council for mainly primary-school children. At Crossroads the residents' associa­ of Churches, SWAPO, and other groups in Namibia. That really tion asked us to run a driving school because the activists in the area changed in October 1984 when troops occupied the black townships needed driving skills. We've also done environmental projects; we felt in South Africa. Young people whdd previously been content to go into that working to improve the environment was also away ofserving your the army, because all they were doing was country, rather than wearing a uniform. Weve also done a lot of cultural being a clerk or doing menial tasks, were activities: art displays, drama, theater. suddenly finding themselves called up into the South Africa relies exclusively on white conscripts, and South African black townships a few miles away from their troops are completely overstretched at the moment. They're occupying secluded white suburbs. at least 35 townships, the whole of Namibia, and areas of southern There was no ambiguity about what the Angola. They're also involved in adventures in other Southern African troops were doing in the townships. Not only countries, and there are simply not enough troops to go around. So were they working hand in hand with the police they're overstretched in terms ofthings like backing up UNITA. Now the in killing township residents opposing them, but American govemment is going to provide $30 million in aid for UNITA, they went house to house in pass raids, helped which means there is basically $30 million which South Africa can then demolish squatter camps, and even did things rechannel into applying apartheid at home. It also means the Angolan Gavin Evans like patrolling whites--only beaches. They were government will not only be fighting against South African troops and involved in what was becoming acivil war, killing and wounding black UNITA, but also against advanced American weapons.
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