POLITICS OF HOPE AND TERROR: South ·Africa in Transition

Report on Violence in South Africa by an American Friends Service Committee Study Team

November 1992 The American Friends Service Committee's concern over Southern Africa has grown out of over 60 years of relationships since the first visit by a representative of the organization. In 1982 the AFSC Board of Directors approved the release of a full length book, Challenge and Hope, as a statement of its views on South Africa. Since 1977 the AFSC has had a national Southern Africa educational program in its Peace Education Division.

AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE 1501 Cherry Street Philadelphia, PA 19102 (215) 241-7000

AFSC REGIONAL OFFICES:

Southeastern Region, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, 92 Piedmont Avenue, NE; Middle Atlantic Region, Baltimore, Maryland 21212, 4806 York Road; New England Region, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140, 2161 Massachusetts Avenue; Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois 60605, 59 E. Van Buren Street, Suite 1400; North Central Region, Des Moines, Iowa 50312, 4211 Grand Avenue; New York Metropolitan Region, New York, New York 10003, 15 Rutherford Place; Pacific Southwest Region, Pasadena, California 91103, 980 N. Fair Oaks Avenue; Pacific Mountain Region, San Francisco, California 94121,2160 Lake Street; Pacific Northwest Region, Seattle, Washington 98105, 814 N.E. 40th Street. CONTENTS II

THE AFSC DELEGATION 1

PREFACE III POLITICS OF HOPE AND TERROR: South Africa in Transition 1 THE BASIC VIOLENCE 2 ANALYZING THE VIOLENCE 5 THE HIDDEN HAND 7 RETALIATION 9 POLICE INVESTIGATIONS 11 LESSONS FROM THE BOIPATONG MASSACRE 12 HOMELAND VIOLENCE IN CISKEI AND KWAZULU 13 HOMELAND LEADERS BUTHELEZI AND GQOZO 16 CONCLUSION 19 RECOMMENDATIONS 20 ACRONYMS 21 TEAM INTERVIEWS AND MEETINGS 22 THE AFSC DELEGATION TO SOUTH AFRICA

The American Friends Service Committee's Board of Directors approved a proposal in June 1992 for a delegation to visit South Africa to study the escalating violence there.

Arrangements for the trip were made with the help of the South African Council of Churches, Border Council of Churches, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and members of the Religious Society of Friends in South Africa. The delegation of six people visited South Africa from October 1 to October 31, 1992.

Delegation members spent almost a week in Johannesburg visiting area townships and Pretoria. Then they split into two teams. Team One drove to Durban, where they were headquartered for a week and visited Pietermaritzburg, Umlazi, Port Shepstone, Richmond, Ulundi, Ngwelezane and other villages and townships in Natal. Team Two remained in Johannesburg, before driving to Bophuthatswana, Mafeking/Mmabatho, Kroonstad, Welkom and Bloemfontein.

The teams came together in Ciskei, just outside King William's Town, where they visited Bisho, East London, Mdantsane, Dimbaza, Alice, and a number of villages in the area.

The reunited group then traveled to Cape Town. There they made visits to Nyanga and Mitchell's Plain. Team members drove 7,000 miles in two cars as they traveled throughout South Africa. They talked to church groups, civic associations, human rights and liberation organizations, police and government officials, Regional Dispute Resolution Committee members, violence-unrest monitors, labor unions, university professors, women's groups, community organizers, and grassroots people of all classes and persuasions. They saw the effects of the violence on people in a country where most citizens cannot count on police protection.

Members of the delegation were:

Sultana Alam -- Writer and United Nations consultant, whorecently spent two years in Malawi.

Harry Amana - Professor ofJournalism at the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member ofthe AFSC delegation to the Frontline Nations in 1977.

Margaret Bacon - Author andformer AFSC staffmember, who visited So/lth Africa in 1964 as part ofthe U.S. South African Leadership Exchange Program. The AFSC Delegation to South Africa

Edgar Lockwood - Minister andformer Washington Office on Africa, Executive Director. Served two years as APSe representative to Zimbabwe. Barredfrom South Africa since 1971 when he was an observer to two terrorist trials.

They were accompanied by AFSC staff, Ken Martin, Associate Executive Secretary, and Tandi Gcabasche, Southern Africa Program Director in the Southeastern region ofthe United States.

ii II PREFACE

Contrary to media reports, apartheid is alive and well in South Africa. While the outward appearances are gone, the political essence of apartheid continues to govern matters of land, political representation and empowerment. Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu and their millions of black followers still have never voted.

The bogus "homeland" structure is still intact, headed by fascist strongmen who carry such titles as "chief' and "general," and who, financed by Pretoria, control heavily armed police and militia that hinder the ability of government opponents to organize, assemble in public, or to demonstrate publicly their opposition to "homeland" governments. Only 30 percent of black South African children graduate from high school, compared to 90 percent of whites -- no wonder, since the government spends three times more on educa­ tion for white children. The South African Police and South African Defence Force still find it convenient to turn their heads the other way when "homeland" tyrants massacre unarmed demonstrators. People still die mysteriously in police custody. By October, 100 people had died in custody in South African jails during 1992. The cause of death most often reported by police is suicide. Land being redistributed today in South Africa is still based on the old 13 percent allotment for black South Africans under the Grand Apartheid scheme. And black South Africans still possess less than 9 percent of the land in their country.

Apartheid is alive and well in South Africa

The continuing wastefulness of this system, combined with the effects of divestments and the worldwide economic slump, has seriously undermined the South African economy. Unemployment nationwide is over 50 percent. Crime also continues to escalate, especially in Johannesburg and the townships. Mean~hile, the de Klerk administration continues to use the apartheid system for its own interests. In October, in an attempt to bypass criminal trials for government atrocities that might arise under a new government, de Klerk tried to get a general amnesty bill passed through the non-black tri-cameral legislature. When this failed, he then used the apartheid-designed scheme that allows him to bypass even this bogus legislative body -- he went directly to the President's Council, which passed the bill for him. Under the provisions of this new apartheid "law" no one in the police, military, intelligence or other government apparatus would have to answer, ever, to any atrocities they might have committed against the South African people. Preface

In the meantime, South Africans, black and white, say the transition from the present stalemated political situation is crucial. Under the present constitution, only whites, "coloreds," and Asians can vote. The next election under the present apartheid constitu­ tion is scheduled to be held in late 1994. Failure to resolve the current impasse within the next 12 to 18 months would be, in the words of one South African official, "too disastrous to contemplate." Moreover, everyone in South Africa agrees, whatever government eventually comes to power, it will be unable to meet even the minimal expectations of the people. Still, at the Convention For a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) and in bilater(j.l negotiations the de Klerk government continues in its attempts to force more and more compromises from the African National Congress (ANC) alliance, while political violence escalates.

But there is an up-side. Life in South Africa goes on, and the spirit of the South African people is indomitable. In spite of the sad and angry circumstances in which we met people, there was much that was inspiring and hopeful in our contacts. People took time from their busy lives to meet with us, guide us, feed and house us, and let us see into the fabric of their lives.

Time and again, we met with members of the Civics Association, grassroots organiza­ tions that developed as alternatives to the discredited government-imposed administrative structures in the townships. Members of these associations, overworked and underpro­ tected, bravely persist in trying to organize, mediate, negotiate, find resources, tend to needs and worry about the safety of their families and themselves.

We listened to a group of older women from several organizations speak proudly of the long tradition of women's struggles in the liberation movement, and of their hopes and fears for their children, who were growing up in a world so much less structured than their own.

We heard the voices of the youth themselves, impatient, idealistic, determined, hopeful, and we understood what a volatile mixture those feelings were.

We listened to Afrikaners, who had made the long personal journey away from the teachings of their culture and their church and who were now actively seeking to speak to the white community about the inevitability and the morality of change.

We moved among and in the company of a marvelous array of church people from a wide spectrum of religious communities as they ministered to their congregations, spoke out on the moral issues of the time, sought to prevent the escalation of violence and held up a vision of a better future. We joined them in prayer and celebration, and mourning.

And we found, again and again, the presence of peace-makers. The churches, civics associations, UN monitors and Regional Dispute Resolution Committees all gave us hope for the present and the future of South Africa.

iv Preface

And among women, especially, we found hope in the fact that they are playing an . increasingly important role in South African organizations. This is happening in labor unions, church groups, political parties, among lawyers, doctors, social workers, violence monitors and in rural development projects. Women are also beginning to discuss publicly such issues as domestic violence and rape. In April 1992, women representing national organizations across the spectrum of political differences united to form the Women's National Coalition, dedicated to making sure that women's rights and women's issues are included in the laws and constitution of the new South Africa. More than 250 delegates from 60 organizations, from the National Party to the Communist Party, agreed on a set of principles and a steering committee. Regional coalitions have subsequently been set up in Western Cape, Transvaal, and Natal.

The ability of these women to find common ground across political and ideological differences is remarkable, observers say. Next spring the Women's Coalition has plans to hold a conference on gender roles in conjunction with the U.S.-based Lawyers Commit­ tee for Civil rights under the Law.

Apartheid may be alive and well in South Africa, but it is being fought and confronted at every tum by millions of people organized and dedicated to creating a new democratic South Africa.

The week before we arrived in Cape Town, hundreds of people gathered at the square in front of the South African Parliament and symbolically renamed it "Albert Luthuli Square" in honor of the late Zulu Chief, ANC president and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

***

v POLITICS OF HOPE AND TERROR: South Africa in Transition

If you spread out a map of South Africa, you will find, across its expanse, dots of various sizes which mark familiar cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. Other dots identify less familiar, smaller cities such as Ladysmith, Bloemfontein and Port Shep­ stone. But for each dot in this national constellation, there is an invisible ring of satellites which the South African cartographers do not identify -- satellites tied to the center cities by powerful forces. These, the nightmares of apartheid, are the black townships -- the Sowetos, Sharpevilles, Alexandras, Maokengs, Urnlazis, Dimbazas and Nyangas.

Each township has its own personality and each one is some version of hell for its inhab­ itants. One may find in the townships neat lanes of modest and imaginatively designed middle-class houses. But just beside these houses, or in back of them, might be rows of poorly constructed cinderblock houses with corrugated roofs, or -- within the deepest circle of physical hell -- the squatter shacks and single-sex migrant hostels. Under apartheid, these townships were designed with minimum infrastructure (water, electricity, sewerage, roads) to house black South Africans who worked in the nearby or adjacent white cities. But with rising unemployment and no farmable land, 80 percent of South Africans have flocked to urban areas, mostly the townships, overburdening their mini­ mum facilities. Thus, Alexandra, for example, originally constructed for 70,000, now has a population of 350,000, most of whom live in houses with no electricity, plumbing or sewerage.

These townships are the site of much of the violence which has convulsed South Africa for the past two and a half years. Since February 1990, over 7,000 people have died in acts of political violence. The de Klerk government has tried to describe this as the result of ethnic rivalries. But most of the people with whom the AFSC team talked believe the government either originated this violence, or, for its own purposes, has refused to halt it. Since violence begets violence, a deadly spiral of attack and retaliation convulses the community.

In an effort to bring some halt to this violence, all the parties signed the National Peace Accord in Setember 1991. In addition, a framework for resolving local disputes was established by a Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) which met first in December 1991]. In two rounds of meetings, CODESA also has provided the framework for talks between all parties leading up to an interim government and elections. But because of the escalating violence, which climaxed with the June 1992 Boipatong massacre in which 44 people were killed, the African National Congress (ANC) with­ drew from CODESA. In October, preparations were underway for a third round of talks. The AFSC asked the team to travel throughout South Africa, talking to people in all walks of life, and trying to understand not only the sources of the violence, but the various supportive roles the AFSC might play. We came painfully close to the subject of Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition our study. We joined a nightly effort to bring food to student political prisoners in the "homeland" of Bophuthatswana. We interviewed a notorious criminal gang in the company of the local police in Maokeng township. We stood amidst an aroused crowd milling about the body of a man killed by police or soldiers in the Botshabelo township. We heard the passionless confessions of three young women who had killed a headman in the Ciskei "homeland" because of his support for the violence of the authorities. We were present at a wake in the township of Alice where a family of four had been killed days before. And we sat in the office of the Cape Town Regional Dispute Resolution Committee when members of thestaffleamed that a colleague had been wounded in an assassination attempt.

During our stay in South Africa, the total prison population increased by its monthly average of 1,000. Another 120 people died from political violence in Natal alone. Almost every day of October, newspapers offered another revelation in the murder inquest of a white professor who had been researching the government's involvement in the political violence in Natal and who was slain by a shotgun blast from a passing car. This was a convoluted story of destroyed police documents, disappearing witnesses, and government instructions to halt any investigation into the behavior of the Civil Coopera­ tion Bureau, the supposedly inactive government "hit squad" agency.

The Basic Violence

In its ascendance, apartheid consolidated a land without justice. In its decline, it has become a land where law is selectively applied, without justice. But the fundamental violence in South Africa is the apartheid system itself.

The goal of apartheid was the creation of an all-white nation of South Africa, which would own 87 percent of the land, including the major commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural areas, and the removal of all indigenous African peoples to 10 isolated homelands made up of only 13 percent of the land -- much of it barren and infertile.

In this vision of Grand Apartheid, Africans would be allowed into the white nation only as migrant laborers, and expelled whenever there was no work for them. Over three million Africans were uprooted from their homes and relocated in the Bantustans, with little or no compensation for the property and lands they left behind. Some of the most courageous struggles the team encountered were those of communities which had resisted relocation and were now returning to reclaim their lands. On the borders of Bophuthatswana, we visited Braklaagte, a village that had for years resisted falling under the authority of the homeland government.

This remains the fundamental violence -- the structural violence of unemployment, homelessness, disenfranchisement, hunger, illness, police repression, the destruction of family life and the victimization of the vast majority of the South African people. Natal

2 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa in Transition alone has 2.6 million squatters. Even two years after the proclamation by the ruling National Party that political change is coming, 35 percent of the national budget goes toward general services, many of which are duplicative efforts to maintain the racial divi­ sions of apartheid, while 20 percent goes toward maintaining a Defence Force that has no credible assignment except to protect the status quo. Only 2 percent goes for health and 4 percent for housing.

While the laws maintaining apartheid have largely been done away with, the control of the economy, by which the great disparity between white and black has been accom­ plished, is still in place. The government now aims to continue that control in a new political setting which would enfranchise blacks but preserve white privilege. The code words for this attempt to retain power are "power-sharing," "federalism" or "regionalism," and "bicameral legislature."

"Power-sharing" is the National Party concept that would allow it to govern in equal or near-equal partnership with the ANC rather than relinquish control to an ANC govern­ ment elected by majority vote. "Federalism" or "regionalism" would be the creation of a loose confederation of states, not too different from the Bantustans, which would give parties such as the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party strength in one or another area of the country so that collectively they could exercise a veto over national legislation. A "bicameral legislature" would be the creation of a second legislative house which would be organized to give the white minority parties and their allies a strength and veto power disproportionate to their numbers.

Violence has reached critical proportions in South Africa and threatens an ordered transi­ tion to democratic rule. Despite the Peace Accord and the unbanning of political parties, violence continues to escalate. According to the Human Rights Update, between January and June 1992, 51 people were killed and 22 injured by hit squads controlled by units within the government. Vigilante gangs, mostly employed by reactionary black local authorities and heads of "homelands" who work closely with the white regime, claimed the lives of another 1,400 men, women and children and injured 1,864. The actions of "protective" security forces resulted in another 74 deaths and 683 injuries. A year after the Peace Accord was signed, Jonathan Gluckman, a pathologist, reported that out of 200 postmortems he performed on people who died in detention, "ninety per cent... I am convinced, were killed by the police."

While the de Klerk government chooses to blame the violence on ethnic rivalries between Zulu and Xhosa, and on the marches and demonstrations called for by the ANC, people in townships and villages are convinced that it is the creation of South African security forces. Community leaders and human rights activists describe the violence as "well orchestrated," "planned," "systematic," and "patterned." At the heart of the violence is the government's attempt to allay or impede democracy, while, at the same time either by direction or license -- it lets the violence do its deadly work.

3 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

In Alexandra township near Johannesburg, an unemployed domestic worker had been forced out of her horne near a single-sex hostel in April 1992. Armed Inkatha "warriors" had raided homes in the vicinity of the hostel, set fIre to houses, and shot and hacked people at random. Sitting in a tin shack in the new squatter quarters that housed survivors, Mary Modrudu was adamant about what she saw. "Police rode in casspirs (armored vehicles) deep in the night," she said. "Using loudspeakers, they ordered the people out of their houses. Then the killings started.... The police are not there to protect us. They exist to kill us.... We don't hate the police. Only what they did to us."

In the Orange Free State in the stark, windswept township of Botshabelo, our meeting with a trade union was suddenly interrupted when we were rushed to the "C" section of the township. Residents wanted us to take photographs of a dead man -- a striking municipal worker who had been gunned down by police while attending a meeting with others from the union in the front of a modest Roman Catholic church. Three other strikers had also been shot and already had been rushed to the hospital with serious injuries. We were pushed through about 200 people to corne face to face with fIve casspirs, several police jeeps and trucks, and a contingent of white and black policemen with automatic weapons and teargas guns. Looking at two policemen laughing and joking at the scene, a young woman who worked as an ANC secretary broke out in rage, screaming: "Animals! Animals! How long will you keep killing us like this? ..How many of us?" For her, too, talk of a neutral police was not credible.

In the township of Maokeng, on the outskirts of Kroonstad in the Orange Free State, we met Mrs. Rantie. She vividly recalled how her 17-year-old son was hacked to death in front of her house by members of the notorious Three Million Stars Gang while two policemen, accompanying the gang, stood by impassively -- ignoring her appeals for help. The incident occurred October 11, 1990, almost a whole year before the Peace Accord. However, for her also nothing has really changed. It is out of the question to expect police to bring the murderers of her son to justice. According to Mrs. Rantie, the gang, once a rag-tag collection of ordinary pick-pockets and thieves, has now evolved into a vigilante force which is being used by the police to terrorize Maokeng because it is an ANC stronghold. Members of the gang have been allowed to drive out a whole block of residents and take over their houses. Deaf to the complaints of the community, the police do nothing to stop the gang as it rampages through Maokeng, looting stores, burning homes, stabbing, and killing with impunity. When we visited, the police appeared to have few links with, or had very little positive to say about the defense units which the community had been forced to set up to protect its members. By contrast, their relations with the gang were cordial.

Now that the government is one of the signatories to the National Peace Accord, which commits it to protect lives and ensure the rule of law, it contends that the security forces have been taken out of politics. Furthermore, the government contends, the security forces have been instructed to shed their historical war mentality which taught police and soldiers to regard anti-apartheid forces as the enemy. But the violence continues and

4 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition without a halt in its destructive effect, it is impossible for South African leaders to sit down to negotiate a new constitution.

Analyzing The Violence

Some conservatives in South Africa support the "black-on-black" tribal description of the political violence taking place in South Africa. Other conservatives say the violence is a "natural outgrowth" of the' now-unbanned parties jockeying for political turf. But members of the liberation movements, civic associations, religious organizations, civil rights groups, and others say the violence is a government destabilization mechanism, used at the grassroots level for three purposes: to keep the ANC and its alliance members from organizing for future elections; to frighten and intimidate residents into losing confidence in the ANC alliance; and to put pressure on ANC-alliance negotiators in CODESA.

The roots of the violence began in 1948 when the National Party came to power and began its violent implementation of a grand apartheid scheme to establish and secure white privilege. Then, in 1960, black South Africans took up armed struggle after the Sharpeville massacre. Finally, widespread grassroots confrontation with apartheid occurred during the 1985-86 period after the United Democratic Front was formed in 1983 in opposition to the government's "total strategy" policy against communities across South Africa.

But most people say -- and statistics seem to confirm -- that the recent acceleration of violence began in 1990, after de Klerk's February announcement that political parties were unbanned and his government was ready to negotiate. The Human Rights Commis­ sion's itemized, month-by-month death count for the two-year period of July 1990 to June 1992 records 6,229 deaths and 11,888 injuries as a result of political violence. Moreover, the report contends, "the on/off character" of the violence and its "correlation between the peaks and troughs and the political calendar," indicate strong probability that the two phenomena are related and work to the advantage of the National Party. What the Study Team heard on the ground strongly supported this finding.

Identifying the violence as "black-on-black" or "ethnic" is a shortsighted tendency of the South African and U.S. media that plays into the hands of those who want to hide the more obvious, but more complex political nature of the violence. The "black-on-black" label, for example, overlooks the fact that the opponents are political adversaries -- ANC and its allies against the South African government, its allies and surrogates -- many of which, on each side, happen to be white. ANC, in fact, appears to be the most integrated political organization in South Africa.

5 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa in Transition

Similarly, the "ethnic" label (frequently headlined "the Zulu war") attempts to identify the violence as Zulu-speaking "tribes" against Xhosa-speaking "tribes". As evidence, some note that some 250 Zulu-speaking Inkatha members wielding poisoned spears and pangas, steel pipes and knobkerries, were bussed from Natal into the Sotho-speaking province of Transvaal in early 1992. There they descended from hostels upon the flim­ sily-built homes of township residents, burning, looting, stabbing and hacking at will. Ignored, however, is the fact that this tactic is used by Inkatha against all language groups, and in Natal -- where the violence is the most escalated -- the tactic is used against ANC villages that are predominantly, if not entirely Zulu-speaking.

Also overlooked is Ciskei violence between ANC and the Ciskei Defence Force and its surrogates, where the patterns are the same as those in Natal, but where the adversaries are Xhosa-speaking. Another source of violence is vigilante attacks by teenage gangs, or unemployed men hard pressed to make a living. The Three Million Gang we visited near Kroonstad consists of boys as young as 13 or 14.

Other violence is often attributable to what people call the "comrade tsotsis," criminal­ elements who might have had former ANC connections, or who pose as ANC members when they commit violence. Though masked when they attack, they call each other "comrades." Sometimes such criminal activity is also political because the assailants may be paid by people with political motives. In Natal, Ngwelazane Mayor and IFP member Alois Kunene said: "There are some who are caught with police or SADF uniforms, who are just criminals. And we have heard of some police who side with political organizations, whether ANC or IFP. It's not easy to distinguish. If you ask some of these (youngsters) to produce an ANC card, they don't have them. But if they are paid RIO to burn a house, which of them is going to say no?"

Assailants frequently carry AK-47's, weapons used by Umkhonto we Sizwe, ANC's military wing. But everyone in South Africa notes that AK-47's are some of the easiest weapons to get. In Durban, Steven Collins, a community-mediator field worker for the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA) told us, "If you get me 300 Rand, I can get you an AK-47 in about five hours." King William's Town Regional Dispute Resolution Chair Bishop Trevor de Bruyn said that near the Mozambique border, one can get the weapon for "a bag of mealies," a food grain commonly eaten in the region. Collins added that army and police uniforms are also easy to get. "Go to the army-navy store, or to ex-members of these forces."

Finally, vigilante and hit-squad attacks near Cape Town have been the work of masked men -- black and white. We heard testimony in Cape Town October 29 before the Gold­ stone Commission (created under the Peace Accord to investigate violence) in which a witness described his fight with a masked man, one of a mob that set fire to hundreds of houses -- including that of the witness -- during the so-called "Taxi Wars." "He pointed a handgun at me," the witness said. "He wore a balaclava and camouflage suit. I tried to avoid him and kicked him in the groin. Then we tussled and I pulled off the balaclava

6 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition and saw that he was a white man." A woman later testified that she, too, saw many of the ski-mask clad arsonists who were white.

The Hidden Hand

The patterns and destabilizing effects of the violence in South Africa have led many South African activists and church leaders to go beyond mere criticisms of police brutal­ ity to speculation about the existence of a "third force." Viewed as a shadowy presence, the THIRD FORCE is said to be comprised of units within the South African Police and South African Defence Force, whose function is to terrorize and divide the opposition. Disclosures by former security force operatives such as policeman Dirk Coetzee and Askaris (former ANC members now working for the government) like Almond Nofemela about their involvement in death-squad activities have given added credibility to the existence of a third force. Adding to the weight of the third force theory is the sheer escalation of political assassinations since the unbanning of political parties and the release from jail of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. According to the Human Rights Commission, the number of assassinations for 1990-1992 (124) is five times higher than the number during 1985-89 when the country was under a State of Emergency.

The exact identity of the security force units engaged in covert activities is difficult to establish, but the Military Research Group provides a fairly comprehensive view of state institutions involved in covert operations. Its list of agencies include: the National Intel­ ligence Service, the various branches of Military Intelligence, the Criminal Intelligence Services, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Joint Coordinating Centers, certain Homeland intelligence agencies, the National Parks Board, the South African Prisons Service, private security companies, and even EPCOM, the national electricity supplier.

Doubts exist about the extent to which covert operations are coordinated, or directly approved by senior politicians such as de Klerk. It is generally suspected that individual units probably function autonomously and that de Klerk does not directly control their activities. While acting independently, however, they share a joint commitment to oppose or delay the assumption of political and economic control by the black majority.

Strong objections are raised by activists as well as jurists about the presence of merce­ nary forces in South Africa from Angola, Mozambique and Namibia. During its inquiry into the Boipatong massacre, the Goldstone Commission uncovered the presence of a 40­ man Namibian Koevoet, led by two white officers, at a workers' hostel maintained by Gold Field Mines in the East Rand. Although suspicions existed that the Koevoet had been used to reinforce Inkatha hostel dwellers during the massacre, there was insufficient evidence to lead to an official finding against the force.

Battalion 32, comprised of Angolan mercenaries, was formally implicated in the Phola Park squatter camp rampage of April 8, 1992. The Goldstone Commission found that the

7 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition soldiers had acted in a manner "completely inconsistent with the function of a peace­ keeping force and, in fact, became perpetrators of violence." The Commission went on to express concern about the attitude of the Captain of Battalion 32 who had justified the actions of the soldiers because he considered them to be involved in what amounted to "a war." (Human Rights Update, Vo/.5, No.6., p. 14)

Despite calls to disband and repatriate foreign mercenary forces, the de Klerk adminis­ tration has only agreed to disband the units and absorb their members into other parts of the Defence Force system. Concern has been raised that this will onlymean the further hardening of other units.

Other suspected "third force" violence includes acts of indiscriminate camage, such as the gunning down of passengers on trains and at bus stops. These are rumored to be carried out by masked people who don't speak any of the languages of South Africa -­ foreign mercenaries, possibly right-wing elements from Angola, Namibia or Mozam­ bique. Observers point out that these attacks are indiscriminate and don't seem to single out ANC leadership. Thus, if the gunmen were local people, they would be at risk of killing off friends and acquaintances who use the trains and buses. Their detachment from South Africans is assumed to make such slaughter more tolerable to the perpetra­ tors.

In Durban, IDASA's Steven Collins said that the third-force possibility in Natal has become more obscure recently. Because of political-party retaliation and police inaction, such a force may have already done its job, he said. "Things are so out of control now," he said, "that you have lots of people who can (escalate the violence) underground, exploiting the conflict between political parties, the rich and poor, youth and elders, the traditional and modern. All it would require is a little push here, a little one there and it will spiral into violence."

Occasionally sufficient evidence surfaces to affirm the existence of a third force. One such break occurred April 23, 1992, when the Supreme Court of Natal convicted a white police Station Commander and four black constables belonging to a "special" unit of 11 murders and two attempted murders at a house in Trust Feed in Natal. The evidence produced in court clearly demonstrates the cynicism with which the security forces contrive Inkatha-ANC hostilities -- even sacrificing Inkatha supporters, when considered necessary, to accomplish this objective.

Briefly, the court found that a massacre of 11 Inkatha supporters which took place in the city of Pietermaritzburg on December 3, 1988, was the outcome of a plot among head of SAP's Riot Unit in Pietermaritzburg, the head of the local Inkatha branch, and the police station Commander to help oust the residents of a local hostel and give Inkatha control over the area.

8 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

On the day preceding the massacre (December 2, 1988), nine members of the residents' association of the hostel were arrested, a curfew declared at night, and the houses of the detainees damaged under cover of the curfew.

At 2 a.m. of December 3, the police commander took the four black "special" constables to a house where a wake was being held, and ordered them to attack the people in the house after himself fIring two shots into the house. The court established that at least two of the special constables entered the house and "deliberately shot the people in it," and that there was "screaming and groaning from the women and children inside that house" but that "despite this" the special constables persisted in the attack.

In the court's opinion, the station commander had fully intended to kill every person in the house. All 11 victims of the massacre, it turned out, were members of Inkatha. The prosecutor for the case argued that this had been by design.

Following the massacre, the incident was covered up and blame was instead placed on members of the hostel residents' association, who were run out of town and forbidden to return. The Station Commander revealed that the Riot Unit of SAP in Pietmaritzburg had previously helped Inkatha to take over other areas by "unlawful means," and that the new contingent of "special" policemen had been created for counter-revolutionary activities directed at the ANC. He went on to elaborate that the "specials" were recruited for SAP by Inkatha leaders, given training and "placed back in the community to act as a physical force or wedge against the tyrannies of the comrades" (International Commission of Jurists, Agendafor Peace, pp. 3-5)

Retaliation

As the violence has continued by hit-squads, vigilantes, homeland police and Inkatha supporters in Natal and Ciskei, it also has increasingly begun spiraling out of control in retaliatory violence:

o Ciskei Defense Force officials released a list in October 1992 of 61 houses that it said belonged to its officials, burned in the aftermath of the Bisho massacre. (Curiously, however, it released no fIgures on violent incidents against residents or ANC supporters.)

o An IFP teacher and organizer in the Port Shepstone area of Natal told us that in early 1990 young people began killing "people in the tribal structure, calling them witch doctors." That same year, he said, a group of masked men killed his aunt and the wife of her youngest son by the brutal method known as "necklacing" -- the placement of a burning tire around the necks or bodies of the victims. Then, in September 1991, he said, masked men that he contends are ANC members killed his mother, his 25-year-old brother and his two small children. Now, he says, he

9 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

keeps a rifle in the house, which is guarded by KwaZulu Police, and he carries a gun when he travels to and from school. "I've already dedicated my life to death," he said. "To die to me is something that is far better than to live."

o Ngwelazane Mayor Alois Kunene in northern Natal described a number of killings and house burnings, perpetrated at night by masked men he said are ANC members. His house, now protected by KwaZulu Police, he said, was attacked with a grenade in a bathroom window, but the grenade failed to go off.

o Abbie Ncume, a 54-year-old IFP nurse, said she had been attacked 10 times since 1987. In one attack, her house was destroyed by a bomb. Her 20-year-old son had joined the ANC, she said, then tried to resign, but was told that he had joined for life. Now he had left the village, and she did not know where he was.

o Three young Ciskei women in their twenties, two of them mothers, told us dispas­ sionately how they had participated in a township murder of a headman and his child. The women had participated in the September march at Bishol, where two had each seen a neighbor killed, while the other had witnessed the death of a rela­ tive. After the massacre, they said, they told the headman to stop working for the government. "We warned him three times," one young woman said. "We told him if he didn't stop this dirty work for Gqozo a cabbage would grow on his back." This, we learned, was a death threat that means "vegetables will grow over you (in your grave)."

On the night after the massacre, they said, a large meeting was held where every­ one agreed to kill the man. The next day, the mob converged on his house, throw­ ing stones and counting the number of bullets he fired at them in retaliation. "Finally," one of the women said, "we counted six shots and we knew it was time to go over his fence and burn his house." Two of his children escaped, the women said, but the headman and another child died in an ambulance in route to a hospital.

Retaliation in these instances takes place against those who are perceived as the puppets and henchmen of corrupt and violent homeland rule: headmen, shacklords, IFP village chiefs and organizers, homeland councilors, police forces, and the African Democratic Movement (ADM), recently formed by the Ciskei government in opposition to ANC. This elaborate system of homeland control is the most difficult for outsiders to under­ stand and each has its own particular nuance, tradition and history. A Natal University researcher who lives in a township told us the history of the headman and shack-lord system, while a CONTRALESA (Congress of the Traditional Leaders of SA) councilor and spokesman gave us the history of the traditional rule by village chiefs. Both men described complex democratic systems that had been corrupted and subverted by homeland rulers, who either appointed these surrogates or controlled and manipulated their purse strings. On the other hand, homeland residents and organizers who seek to meet, march, demonstrate, or receive pensions or other benefits, find themselves at

10 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition constant loggerheads with these homeland surrogates. When they persist in their efforts to assert democratic and civil rights actions, they face the possibility of hit-squad or vigilante attacks.

Police Investigations

In case after case, residents report that police were forewarned about impending attacks and did nothing. Frequently the police accompany and direct Inkatha vigilantes about to attack. Based on video footage, the U.S. State Department expressed concern over the involvement of the South African Police (SAP) in some of the current massacres, and the failure of the South African government to take disciplinary action against members of the security force:

Despitemany charges ofabuse by lawyers and human rights activists,few security officials were suspended or prosecuted in 1991. In March [1991] residents ofAlexandra [were victims ofan Inkatha attack]. The police, despite being within hearing distance ofthe attack, did not intervene. In May, video footage showed men walking past police vehicles [during an Inkatha attack], and the police driving by twice without taking action. At least 24 people were killed. (Quoted in Gay McDougall, Testimony Prepared for the Subcommittee on Africa of the U.S. House of Representatives, p.2.)

In normal circumstances access to video footage is denied, and courts are confined to considering verbal testimony. Since investigators do not bother to interview residents, their testimonies do not reach the courts. In February 1992 when ANC activist Skum­ buzo Ngwenya was assassinated, a group of American business professionals were on hand. In a subsequent press statement on the incident the group expressed dismay:

"Numerous witnesses present at the scene were never interviewed by police. The area was not cordoned offto conduct an evidence search. We observed some police joking and laughing at the scene." Police condemned the statement and suggested that it be treated with the "contempt it deserves". (McDougall, p.3 of Addendum)

Negligence in collecting material evidence and making proper arrests is also a familiar pattern in police investigations. When weapons are collected from hostels after a massacre, instead of each being carefully identified with its owner, they are piled in heaps, making subsequent arrests and prosecution of suspects difficult. According to Lawyers for Human Rights: "Police investigations in violence related cases have [been] negligent, and where it involved police officers, non-existent."

11 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

Instead of material evidence, the police rely on confessions which often are extracted through torture. This practice results in the incrimination of third parties who may not have been responsible for a crime, and the real culprits go free while the courts prosecute people against whom there is insufficient evidence.

Lessons from the Boipatong Massacre

When we visited Boipatong where over 47 people were killed on June 17, 1992, an offi­ cial inquiry by the Goldstone Commission had been completed. In Boipatong, the police had ignored the communities' pleas for help, had not cared to listen to the victims who survived and appeared to have sided with the Inkatha attackers from the KwaMadala hostel.

We were told that a gas station attendant had seen armed Inkatha residents emerge from KwaMadala hostel as they headed towards the township and had telephoned the police for help. According to a member of the South African Council of Churches, a similar warning and plea for intervention had been made by members of church groups days earlier. Two families, who had been directly attacked, reported that police vehicles had accompanied the mob as it tore through their neighborhood. Despite this, the recent probe into the massacre conducted by Peter Waddington of Reading, England, absolves the police of direct complicity in the massacre but does find SAP's performance during and after the event "woefully inadequate."

The frustration, anger and grief that people feel after an attack is too intense and painful to expect them to also contend with proving the existence of a third force. Primary for them are the obligations to bury loved ones, gather pathetic sheets of tin and plastic to replace the home that has been burned, take care of their children (like the 3-year-old girl we saw in Boipatong whose head had been slashed with a poisoned panga, leaving her with an unseemly scar and paralyzed for life) and to offer shelter to the victims, such as the 22-year-old woman and her five younger siblings whose parents had been hacked to death in front of her eyes.

Allister Sparks, one of South Africa's leading white journalists, who visited Boipatong shortly after the massacre, has recorded some of this:

I despaired because every man, woman and child I spoke to in Boipatong told me they believed the police had escorted the attackers from a nearby migrant workers' hostel housing supporters ofZulu ChiefMangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Parry into their township and out again after the slaughter.

I despaired because I saw with my own eyes how inept the police are at handling [this} kind ofvolatile situation.

12 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa in Transition

Sparks also contemplates the huge divide that separates South Africa's black people -­ ghettoized in the poverty and suffering of townships and "homelands" -- from whites surrounded by gardens, swimming pools and golf country clubs in suburbia:

Whatever the president and ministers may say, however many exculpatory statements the official spokesmen may issue, the people at the receiving end ofthe knives and hatchets and crude homemade guns know who attacked them. You can bluffthe whites in their remote suburbs, but you can't bluffthe blacks who are there on the spot -- and the more you try, the more you discredit yourself. (Washing;ton~, June 28, 1992)

Homeland Violence In Ciskei And KwaZulu

In a large mud house in Msombomvu, a Ciskei village near Alice, a dozen dark old women sat silently in a semi-circle on the floor, staring intently as us and our guides as we asked questions about their recent tragedy. In their variegated, multi-colored blouses, long skirts and head wraps, these women had come to grieve with the younger woman in their midst who sat despondently, wrapped in a heavy woven blanket, mourning the recent "vigilante" murder of her 42-year-old husband.

This murder was one of four that had occurred at two Msombomvu homes just after midnight, October 15 -- four days before we arrived -- when two masked men came to the house looking for the man's 31-year-old brother, an active member of the African National Congress.

"When we told them he wasn't here, they asked who was in the other room," said a 19­ year-old woman who also lived in the six-room house. "When my uncle opened the room door, they shot him in the chest, and then shot again. Then they shot in the room where the rest of us slept; shot the windows. Then they left and threw in a hand grenade."

She took cover under a piece of furniture and escaped serious injury, she said, pointing to the shrapnel marks on her thighs, legs and left hand. Her sister, too, escaped serious injury, but two others were still in the hospital. Meanwhile, the widow showed us a stitched gash on her left arm, and indicated with an index finger where she was injured on her left chest and side. The back room where the murder and explosion had occurred was now a burnt-black cavern, showered with pinpoint rays of sunlight that shone through holes riddled in its corrugated tin roof -- the result, house members said, of the flying shrapnel. Makeshift cloth covered its two shattered window frames. In an adjacent room, they showed us bullet holes in the walls, mattresses and furniture.

As we left the house, another score of women had gathered outside, waiting to enter to join their grieving sisters.

13 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa in Transition

Such scenes are replicated almost every week in homeland villages and townships across South Africa, after balaclava-clad men attack at night in attempts to kill, maim or intimi­ date members of community or political organizations -- usually the ANC. The patterns vary slightly by region, but the stories are the same in Dimbaza, Mdantsane, Umlazi, Phatheni, Ngwelazane.... The Ciskei victims say that unidentified men attack at night with automatic weapons, grenades and firebombs, and are rarely apprehended. Never is anyone convicted. In KwaZulu, township residents said that hordes of angry armed Inkatha men from nearby hostels invaded in wave after wave, destroying hundreds of mud homes, killing and injuring anyone in their paths. In all cases, the victims said, results are the same. Officials arrive, take reports, gather cartridges and leave with instructions to call them if the murderers return. There is never any follow-up, only a coming together of the women mourners.

In the so-called "independent" states or "self-governing" homelands like KwaZulu and Ciskei -- lingering vestiges of the decaying apartheid system -- it is the Ciskei Defense Force or the KwaZulu Police, or some other homeland police force, that is called in to investigate. These are the same forces, victims said, who threaten them, stand by when they are attacked, and in many instances, do the killing themselves. Evidence of such occurrences already have been documented by the Goldstone Commission on the Bisho massacre in September, where 29 people were killed and hundreds injured.

And when violence occurs in border areas of the piecemeal homelands, the South Africa Police (SAP) or the South Africa Defence Force (SADF) say their hands are tied because they cannot enter an independent territory. SAP Lt. Colonel Christo Louw, who sits on the Regional Dispute Resolution Committee in King William's Town, told us that he was at the Bisho border when the massacre occurred, but that there was nothing he could do.. "SAP involvement was up to the border," he said. "We couldn't go further." Still, many residents said, SAP and SADF members enter territories when it suits them, or when they deem it necessary to "patrol" or "monitor" community activities. Members of the Minis­ ters Fraternal in Mdantsane said that "A lot" of SADF personnel frequent the nearby police station and also enter their township, ostensibly to protect industries and factories that they say are owned by South Africa.

Even where township violence has spilled into South African territory, SAP and SADF personnel might still ignore it. Member of Parliament Pierre Cronje(who announced his ANC membership in June) described a January scene in Natal, in Richmond, in which 6,000 people, many of them injured, had been chased from their homes into the town by Inkatha hostel dwellers. He said the refugees were refused help by the SAP, SADF and the town mayor, even when Cronje as an MP arrived on the scene and asked them to intervene. Moreover, he said, officials refused to care for any of the injured. "Not one agency of the state lifted a finger to help in any way," he said. "We had to go to the Red Cross, the churches and other relief agencies for help."

Democratic Party activist Roy Ainslie, who also serves as an Unrest Monitor in the Durban area, told a similar story about the launching of an ANC youth committee in·

14 Politics of Hope andTerror: South Africain Transition

April 1992. "When we arrived at the school, the whole place had been taken over by armed warriors," Ainslie said. "And as we interviewed people and turned at a bend in the road, we saw KwaZulu Police actually transporting more of these men into the area."

On another occasion, he said: "I saw SAP standing by while people attacked and looted houses. Often it is acts by omission. The most prominent element is the refusal or hesi­ tancy of police to do anything when violence is being committed." On the other hand, he added, "In areas where ANC youth are aggressive and have taken the offensive against some criminal elements and have engaged in some fighting, the SAP has stepped in vigorously."

In Umlazi, Natal, accompanied by Human Rights Commission field worker lenni Irish, we talked to a teenage couple who walked slowly through a demolished area. "That is where I lived," the girl said, pointing to a small partially damaged mud hut. The area, they said, had been attacked by Inkatha Freedom Party men who lived in Unit 17, the infamous "T" section of the area. Irish said the men from the single-sex quarters that overlook the demolished sector had first invaded the area in February 1992, killing four people with the assistance of the KwaZulu Police, "who took off their shirts so they wouldn't be identified." Over 100 houses were burned or destroyed in four days, she said. The couple said that "T Section" men had also approached the outskirts of the abandoned area the day before, shooting randomly toward the area. This may have been an effort, Irish said, to make sure no one was returning.

All of the people who acted as official or ad hoc violence unrest monitors told us several stories of how violence occurred even in their presence, or in the presence of other monitors. The Bisho massacre occurred in front of a number of monitors, including those from the United Nations. A guide who took us to the site of the massacre, said: "These people don't care about monitors. I was here, and I saw the U.N. monitor running for his life like everyone else. He even fell down, there." According to news reports, the Octo­ ber 15 Msombomvu killings occurred less than 12 hours after monitors had visited there to investigate reports by school children that they feared harassment from Ciskei security forces. There was also a "heavy South African Defence Force presence at nearby Ntselemanzi village," according to a press report.

ANC supporter Thamsanga Badi was the primary target of the second Msombomvu attack. He told us that around midnight he heard a banging on his window, but he kept quiet. Then, he said, the gunmen broke the window and started firing, and, "as they were firing, I went through the back window." His brother was injured in the incident, he said, so he borrowed a car and took him to a hospital. As he was driving away, he heard more gunshots but couldn't see who was shooting.

Thamsanga Badi got his brother to the hospital, where he was treated for gunshots in the stomach, shoulder, leg and foot. But when Thamsanga returned home, he said, "I found my mother and father and 10-year-old child were dead," killed by the assassins. A press report later said that the ANC had identified one of the gunmen as a security policeman

15 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition who lived in the village. The report said that Alice security police confIrmed that there was a member with the name given by the ANC, but denied its members had taken part in the murders. When we left the Badi home, it was fIlled with mourning women.

We also visited Mase1e, a village outside King William's Town, and interviewed a teacher whose quick wits and reflexes kept her and her children from harm when a hand grenade was thrown into her bedroom around 11 p.m., two days before our arrival. The room where the grenade exploded was a black hole, but she escaped uninjured when she heard the grenade crash through her window. Another grenade exploded against the back wall of her house and started a fIre, but she and her sister were able to put it out. She is a member of the ANC women's league. In this incident no one was injured, but when we arrived the village women had gathered in solidarity with their sister.

A visit to Dimbaza that same day to the houses of three ANC members revealed similar patterns: a hand grenade in a bedroom window, automatic gun fire into the front of one house, and into a bedroom of another, both from a passing vehicle, all at night, by unknown assailants. An ANC mother of four, whose family narrowly escaped injury October 5 when automatic rifle fIre riddled her bedroom wall, set the tone for those who have died in political violence and for those who mourn them. "I tell my children to trust in God," she said, "because we don't have any protection here."

Homeland Leaders Buthelezi And Gqozo

KwaZulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi is an expert at exploiting the "ethnic," or "racial" card that plays into the hands of the gullible or biased media. An example of this is Buthelezi's misrepresentations of ANC's insistence that he and his party abide by the terms of the National Peace Accord agreement that both signed last year. ANC and many Violence Unrest Monitors say that Inkatha members frequently use what they call "traditional weapons" to kill or injure township dwellers when encounters or disagree­ ments begin. These weapons include not only the spears and shields used in traditional village ceremonies, but also sticks, axes and other weapons not a part of Zulu tradition, ANC says. So when ANC pressured de Klerk in September 1992 to ban all weapons at meetings and demonstrations -- in compliance with the Peace Accord -- Buthulezi called it cultural discrimination against seven million Zulus.

Buthelezi has also reinterpreted ANC's repeated attempts to meet, demonstrate or orga­ nize in KwaZulu. A planned ANC march to Ulundi, the KwaZulu capital in the heart of Zululand, has been misrepresented by Buthulezi, with the help of the mainstream press, as a march "against the Zulu people" in an effort to "exterminate" them. And while ANC points out the foolhardiness of such a position since many of its members -- including three of its four presidents, and perhaps most of its members in KwaZulu -- are Zulu, Buthulezi was able to stage an October demonstration in Johannesburg in which some 20,000 - 30,000 people participated, with "traditional weapons," ostensibly in opposition

16 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition to the September agreement between de Klerk and Mandela. ANC supporters were quick to point out that Buthelezi's application to carry weapons during the march was refused by Johannesburg, which should have made his actions illegal. ANC, meanwhile, compared this hands-off government policy with the way government forces hamper, hinder or stop ANC meetings, demonstrations and marches. They note, too, Buthelezi's continued insistence that ANC shall not march in Ulundi.

It should also be noted that a proper assessment of the Johannesburg march cannot be made because many of the marchers may not have had a choice about marching. KwaZulu employees -- everyone who holds a government job -- are required to sign a loyalty oath to support and not criticize Buthelezi or the government. Many are also required to become IFP members. Many teachers and civil servants have complained about this requirement, but no real dissension is allowed in KwaZulu, especially if a person wants to keep a civil service job. And no such dissension is allowed on any large scale by ANC. Organizers in northern Natal, for example, note that in many instances they have had to apply three or four times to get a permit to hold a meeting, only to find out at the last minute that the request has been rescinded. Sometimes, they said, the notice comes too late to notify members and when they show up they are confronted by police. At other times they get permission to meet at, for example, noon, but when they arrive at the site, an IFP meeting that began at 10 a.m. is still going on, and its members show no signs of leaving. Meanwhile, KwaZulu Police also arrive at the scene.

In Ciskei, strongman Brigadier General Oupa Gqozo has the advantage of being abso­ lutely in charge, apparently for life. King William's Town attorneys Dumisani Tabata and John Smith said there is nothing in the Ciskei constitution that allows for impeach­ ment or recall of Gqozo. But they have taken numerous cases in efforts to attack two specific provisions of the constitution that can arbitrarily prevent free speech and free assembly. All of this is complicated also by Gqozo's sudden reinstatement of the head­ man system that he had abolished when he came to power. "After the coup, he agreed publicly that the headman system was corrupt, and he abolished it and allowed residence associations to be formed," said Tabata. "Then, he turns around this year and unilaterally abolished these associations and reintroduced headmen in an attempt to force grassroots support for the African Democratic Movement," the organization Gqozo formed in oppo­ sition to ANC.

Many Ciskei residents pointed out what one person called "the foolhardiness" of trying to stop ANC from organizing in Ciskei. "We are all ANC here," a university administrator told us. "We were born ANC. Our fathers were ANC. Some of us are three generations ANC. And we have no quarrels with other groups, like PAC (The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania). In fact, sometimes even PAC organizers will defer to us on certain things, because they know that we are so many here."

A Border Council of Churches organizer agreed with this assessment and noted that in the area now known as the Ciskei, "We have never had this kind of violence before." But now, he added, "We are very afraid that things are starting to get like you see in Natal."

17 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

Meanwhile, Gqozo has continued to make it increasingly difficult for people to assemble ,I in Ciskei. A planned Bisho march on August 4, 1992, resulted in a last-minute cancella­ tion after some 30,000-40,000 people had amassed. Only after five or six hours of negoti­ ation by church and community leaders was the March allowed to proceed at the last minute, some six hours later than planned. And even as organizers had planned for the August march, "In mid-July the CDF came to Dimbaza and beat us," an ANC organizer told us. "Some lost their eyes, others had broken jaws and broken arms. I myself was a victim. I was beaten, almost to death and detained for two weeks. They don't want anyone to belong to ANC." Still, he said, "We had more than 3,000 people (attend the march and rally) from Dimbaza."

Ironically, in Ciskei, where Gqozo has no IFP-Zulu angle to play, his strong-arm methods, creation of the ADM, and reinstatement of the headman system seem to have backfired. From September 1 through October 12, headmen were the targets of 45 attacks, according to Bishop Trevor de Bruyn, chairman of the Regional Dispute Reso­ lution Committee in King William's Town. "And there have been over 100 attacks (by residents against Ciskei officials) in all," he said.

The second Bisho march in September was larger than the first. An estimated 50,000­ 60,000 people filled nearby King William's Town. "This time more people came from Dimbaza than before," the ANC organizer said. "We had buses this time, many of them." But the massacre has resulted in increased massive retaliation by Ciskei residents.

Meanwhile, none of the violence could be handled by the RDRC because Gqozo had withdrawn from the committee, even though he is a signatory to the Peace Accord that created the committees. "We're hampered by the withdrawal of the Ciskei government," de Bruyn said. "They say that they're a sovereign government, but the response to that is that it's a creation of the South African government that holds the purse strings and can force compliance. It's a complex thing. The only solution is an interim government."

KwaZulu's Buthelezi has not pulled IFPmembers out of the Regional Dispute Resolution Committees, but where RDRCs continue to meet, they take a lot of time and frequently fail to settle major disputes. In Richmond we sat through a session October 7 where negotiators, monitored by two United Nations representatives, attempted to mediate an ongoing dispute over the return of some 300-400 refugees who had been run out of their homes in Phatheni two years earlier by IFP members. In what was described as the 10th negotiating session, the chair, in carefully chosen words, reminded the Inkatha members on one side of the aisle and the ANC members on the other that "anything said here could lead to blood, so be careful." But this session was unsuccessful. The IFP speakers told ANC that the refugees must first go back to their homes and apologize to their parents and relatives who were still in Phatheni, and get their relatives to go to the tribal chief for forgiveness and instructions on what their future behavior should be. It is not in keeping with tradition for chiefs to dictate, ANC members said, and implicit in this requirement would be a pledge to support Inkatha.

18 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

The session continued again the next day and again ended in a deadlock when the chief did not show up as expected. Eventually, on October 17, when some 300 refugees went into the area while police, soldiers and Unrest Monitors looked on, snipers opened fIre, wounding an ANC supporter in the back. An SAP offIcer was also wounded when a police vehicle was hit by gunfIre. Later, IFP members mobilized and the refugees had to leave the area. No arrests were reported.

Since that time, violence has continued to escalate. On October 18, fIve men and three women were killed, and 18 others were wounded at Shlazeni Reserve in Umgababa, Natal. Media reported that it was the result of an IFP attack on ANC supporters. Then on October 24,20 IFP members were reported killed in Natal by ANC supporters.

Conclusion

The present state of violence and retaliatory violence may have spun out of control in South Africa, beyond the expectation of any group or force that might have benefIt-ted from it.

The Human Rights Commission reports that the violence seems to have run out of control and become counter-productive to the government's interests. It has frightened off foreign investors at a time when South Africa is in the throes of a deep recession and has applied to the world economic institutions for "developing nation" status. In effect, the government has re-enforced a new kind of economic sanction against the country.

The HRC concludes: "The forces initially unleashed by the apartheid government in this Strategy of Destabilization now seem to have taken on a momentum and agendas of their own. Strong and resolute action by their erstwhile master will be necessary to bring them to heel."

***

19 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

RECOMMENDATIONS

• That the United States and the international community call upon the South African government to halt the violence within the framework of the National Peace Accord, and to ensure the rights and security of all its citizens.

• That the South African government immediately cease any covert operations designed to weaken other political parties in a future democratic political process.

• That the South African government act to restrain and prosecute criminal gangs in a timely and impartial way. It must intervene into hostile situations with the safety of innocent people uppermost in mind. • That the South African government ensure the protection of citizens' rights to peace­ fully organize, campaign, assemble politically, demonstrate and march.

• That the South African government open its intelligence, military and police appa­ ratus to the scrutiny of the South African public. • That the South African Police and Military be restructured and retrained, and that access to their ranks be open and fair.

• That the international community, especially the churches, provide community­ based observers housed in the areas where violence is taking place to continue monitoring the violence and the transition to majority rule.

• That the international church community support the South African Council of Churches and the Institute of Contextual Theology efforts at voter education and eventual registration. • That the international community play an active role in facilitating and, as appropri­ ate, financing the transition to democratic rule. • That the United Nations continue to provide and increase the number of observers to monitor the violence and the transition to majority rule. • That the GAD provide observers to monitor the violence and the transition to major­ ity rule. • That there be no further lifting of trade and investment sanctions until the South African people have achieved an interim government and an elected constituent assembly.

***

20 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

ACRONYMS II

ADM African Democratic Movement (Ciskei) ANC African National Congress AWB Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging APLA Azanian Peoples Liberation Anny AZAPO Azanian Peoples Organization BCC Border Council of Churches CCB Civil Cooperation Bureau CDF Ciskei Defense Force CODESA Convention for a Democratic South Africa CONTRALESA Congress of the Traditional Leaders of South Africa COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions CP Conservative Party DP Democratic Party ICT Institute for Contextual Theology IDASA Institute for Democratic Alternatives for South Africa IFP Inkatha Freedom Party MK Umkhonto we Sizwe (ANC) NACTU National Congress of Trade Unions NP National Party PAC Pan Africanist Congress of Azania POPCRU Police and Prisons Union (COSATU) RDRC Regional Dispute Resolution Committee SACC South African Council of Churches SACOB South African Chamber of Business SACP South African Communist Party SACTU South African Congress of Trade Unions SADF South African Defense Force SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations SANCO South African National Civics Organization SAP South African Police UDF United Democratic Front UWUSA United Workers Union of South Africa WCC World Council of Churches ZP KwaZulu Police

21 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

TEAM INTERVIEWS AND MEETINGS

PHILADELPHIA

Godfrey Sithole, African National Congress Shuping Coapoge, African National Congress Nozipo Glen, Pan Africanist Congress ofAzania

NEW YORK

Dr. S.E.M. Pheko, Pan Africanist Congress ofAzania Kingsley Makhubela, African National Congress Waldemar Zastrow, South African Consulate Dumisani Kumalo, American Committee on Africa Bill Johnson, Episcopal Church People for a Free South Africa Elizabeth Landis, Episcopal Church People for a Free South Africa

JOHANNESBURG AREA

South African Council of Churches, Morning Worship Bernard Spong, SACC, Communications Department John Lamola, SACC, Justice & Social Ministries Fr. Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, Institutefor Contextual Theology Jeff Marishane, ICT, Research officer and Project Coordinator Sr. Bernard Ncube, ICT Group meeting, Legal Resources Center George Bizos Thandi Oleyn Jakes Ellen Francis ANC Meeting Moray Hawthorn Lavery Modise Carl Niehaus, Communicationss Jerry Nddu, Youth League, Sidney Mufamadi, Peace Process Field Trips to Alexandra Township and Sandton Market Theatre performance of"Playland," by Athol Fugard

22 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transit/on

Religious Services Soweto Quaker Meeting, Johannesburg Quaker Meeting St. Paul's Anglican Church, Charles Ngakula, Deputy General Secretary, SACP Essop Pahad, ANC, International Department Kelly Lengane, Community Health Awareness Project Oupa Ngwenya, AZAPO Mbulelo Rakwela, Foreign Affairs Secretary, AZAPO Charles Ndabeni, Dept ofSocial Ministries, SACC Rocky Williams, Military Research Group Kalie Hanekom, Director, 5 Freedoms Forum Clive Wright, British Vice-Consul, Johannesburg Gary Robbins, Political Affairs, US Embassy, Johannesburg Azanian Youth Organization Gabu Tugwana, Asst. Editor, The Nation Jay Naidoo, COSATU Geoff Brown Kyangelo Legoro Rapu Molekane, NEC, Soweto Vaal South African Council of Churches: Rev. M.1. Kolokoto, Organizing Secretary, SACC, Vaal Rev. David Dinkebogile Rev. Phillip Molefe, Vice-chairperson Jackson Mabishe Ref. "Gift" Moerane Nephtake Nkopane Mkele Joyce Bohloko Bishop N. Mali Joseph "Tex" Molobi, Deputy President, National Civic Association, Alexandra T. T. Skhosana, Pastor SACC, Vaal Ian Broad, Director, Phuthing School Ebrahim Chand Jacaranda Sililo Hlonipha Mokoena Mbali Nasando Dinner Meeting, Beyers and Ilsa Naude Marius deJager, CEO, Johannesburg Chamber ofCommerce and Industry Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Bangumzi Sifingo Ahmed C. Motala Indarin Govender, Lawyerfor Human Rights Dinner Meeting, PAC Ahmed Gora Ebrahim, Secretary Foreign Affairs Count P. Pieterson, ChiefofProtocol

23 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

PRETORIA

Andre van Heerden Beukes, Colonel, South Africa Police Fanie Van der Merwe, Constitutional Advisor

NATAL

University of Natal Paulus Zulu, Senior Fellowp ofthe Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit Jenni Irish, Field Worker, Researcher, Human Rights Commission Field Trip to Umlazi and Zamani Townships Mkhary Eric Dlomo, ANC Youth League, Ozwathini, Applesbosch Richard Steele, Anita Kromberg, IFOR Jeremy Routledge Nozizwe Madlala Mark Povall Pierre Cronje, MP, ANC Field Trip with Cronje to Edendale, Ndaleni, Pietermaritzburg, Richmond (Regional Dispute Resolution Committee meeting to negotiate IFP-ANC dispute over return ofrefugees to Patheni) Sibusiso Ndabele, ANC Regional Secretary Muzi Mkhwanazi, Inkatha Institute Field Worker Field Trip with Mkhwanazi to Port Shepstone James Zulu, IFP Roy Ainslie, Democratic Party, Unrest Monitoring Group Field Trip with Richard Steele to Phoenix Settlement, Patrick Nxumalo, Director, Mahatma Gandhi Clinic Ela Ramgobin, Women's League Regional Executive Secretary Asha Ramgobin, National Association ofDemocratic Lawyers Dr. F.T. Mdlalose, IFP Chair, CODESA Negotiator Alois Kunene, Mayor, IFP Abbie Mchunu, IFP Women's Brigade nurse, organizer Senzo Mchunu, ANC Regional Secretary Thembeka Mehunu, ANC Women's League Fatima Nahara, ANC Deputy Chair Steven Collins, IDASA Field Worker Archbishop Dennis Hurley, Roman Catholic Mary de Haas, Professor ofSocial Anthropology, Natal University

EAST LONDON/KING WILLIAM'S TOWN

King William's Town Border Council of Churches Morning Meeting and Worship Visit to Bisho and the September massacre site

24 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

Dumisani Tabata and John Smith, ANC Attorneys for Bisho victims IDASA NGO Meeting, Representativesfrom POCRU, CONTRALESA, PAC Women's League, Community Development in Rural Areas, Rural Advice Center, IDASA King William's Town Regional Dispute Resolution Committee Sakumai Scatsha, SANCO Lt. Colonel Cristo Louw, SAP Elsabe Kemp, MP, Nationalist Party Andre Samerman, RDRC Secretariat Trevor de Bruyn, RDRC Chair and Methodist Bishop Andrew Hendrick, Deputy President Donne Cooney, Regional Executive Committee, ANC Joe Mati, Regional Executive Committee, ANC Thomas Smits Peace Desk Mcebisi Bata, Publicity Officer Priscilla Hliso, SANCO Field Worker with women refugees M. M. Mabesele, University ofthe North, Transvaal Albert Whittles, Border Council ofChurches

BOPHUTHATSWANA/KROONSTAO/WELKOM/BLOEMFONTEIN

Mafeking/Mmbatho, Anti-Repression Forum (MAREF) Roy Williams Ephraim Motoko Marjorie Mabote Jaya Ruthanam, Thado Sejanamane Chief Braaglaagte, Seerust Tsiu Oupa V. Matsepe, Attorney, and Civic Association in Lithibe Tau and Lengau, Rev. Humphrey Kusunga Lieut. Ramositli George Daniels Dennis Bloom Lieut. Deon Sevenster, Special Branch, "Solly Smith" 3 Million Stars Gang-30 members Colin Mohola, organizer National Union ofMine Workers, Welkom Sekhopi Maelbo, ANC Bloemfontein, Chairperson, Southern OFS Peter Jafta, Teachers Union Pinki Nkolla, SACC Conference on Political Repression in Bophuthatswana J. Mabeo, General Secretary, SACC Bophuthatswana T. M. Vumazonke, Legal and Constitutional Affairs, SACC J. Moletsane, Urban and Rural Development P. Sethato, Land and Housing, SANCO Supper with Henning Maberg, IDASA, OFS region Botshabelo, SANCO local branch Joseph Molitsane, Urban rural, local government development

25 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa in Transition

T.M. Vumazonke J.M.Mabena Aaron Thebe Alison Gule, Civic Organizer Isaac Phadi, ANC, G Hostel Jackee Mabeba, South African Textile Workers Union Field Trip to Masele Themba Masele, Secretary Residential Association

DIMBAZA

Smuts Ngyoma, ANC chair, branch Maria Bevu, Publicity Secretary Vuyisile Radoni, deputy chair Hzimeni Amos Vanga Vuyisile Kempele, organizer Dinner Meeting with Rev L. Roberts M. Ngala, Methodist Mr. Zola Ndlwana, Hospital Clerk Rev Thami Malebesi, Arch Deacon, Anglican, East London Member of the Dispute Resolution Committee Rev. Lulama Ntshingwa, Anglican Rector, St. Francis Church Rev. Sipho Somngesi, Methodist Rev. Gnabuzela, Presbyterian Teboho Loate Patutu Nzume Geneva Bojang Overnight stay with four Mdantsane families Sunday Worship at three churches, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian in the Ciskei

Contralesa Meeting

Vnsumuzi Maenda, Publicity Secretary Nimrod Nokubeka, Councilor Fort Hare University Petrus Strijdom, Theology Gideon Thorn, Theology Gordon Zide, Acting Rector Rev. M.A. Stofile, Public Relations, ANC, NEC J.R. Du Plessis, Law D. Khoapa, Registrar Chris Aucamp, History Field Trip to Msombomvo

26 Politics of Hope and Terror: South Africa In Transition

CAPETOWN

Quaker Peace Center Meeting with QPC Staff and Peace Alliance Jeremy Seekings, University ofCape Town Benny Witbooi, Western Province Council ofChurches, Organizing Secretary Shun Govender, WPCC Theological Officer

BELLVILLE

Regional Dispute Resolution Committee Retief Olivier, Secretary Helena-Maria Lim, UN Monitor, Brazil Vladimir Zhagora, UN Monitor Wynand Louw, Institutefor Social Development, UniJilersity ofthe Western Cape Pethu Serote Center for Adult and Continuing Education, University ofWestern Cape Anthea MacQuene, International Labor Research and Information Group Johnson Mpukumpa, ANC Chair, SANCO Nyanga; Western Cape RDRC member, . (Interviewed in Groote Schuur Hospital recovering from attempted assassination Field Trip to Nyanga Leslie Liddle, Foundationfor Peace and Justice John Stewart, AFSC Southern African Representative ANC Women's League: Susan Conjwa Nomsosi Malkelu Mangwathu Violet Jack Mildred Hollow Adelaide Nkayi Amelia Lubola Mikali SACP Rally at Community Center in Mitchell's Plain Joe Siovo, SACP and ANC Dullah Omar, ANC Goldstone Commission Hearing Themba Mkola giving testimony in Capetown

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