... .. ... .. .. .. A TAMBO AND THEAFRIA NAIOA CONRES MANDELA, TAMBO, AND THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS MANDELA, TAMBO, AND THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS The Struggle Against Apartheid, 1948 - 1990 A DOCUMENTARY SURVEY EDITED BY SHERIDAN JOHNS R. HUNT DAVIS, JR. New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1991 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin lbadan Copyright © 1991 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mandela, Tambo, and the African National Congress : the struggle against apartheid, 1948-1990 : a documentary survey / edited by Sheridan Johns, R. Hunt Davis, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-19-505783-X ISBN 0-19-505784-8 (pbk.) 1. Apartheid-South Africa- History-Sources. 2. South Africa-Politics and government-20th century- Sources. 3. Blacks-South Africa-Politics and government-Sources. 4. African National Congress- History-Sources. 5. Mandela, Nelson, 19186. Tambo, Oliver, 1917I. Johns, Sheridan, 1935- . II. Davis, R. Hunt, 1939. DT1757.M36 1991 968-dc2O 90-40526 Published in South Africa by Oxford University Press Southern Africa Harrington House, Barrack Street, Cape Town, 8001 ISBN 0-19-570641-2 (pbk.) 246897531 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The following serves as a continuation of the cop'right page. Unless otherwise specified, all documents arc reprinted with the permission of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. Account by Lord Nicholas Bethel!. 1985. From Mail on Sunday, January 27, 1985. Reprinted by permission of Lord Nicholas Bethel[. Account by Eddie Daniels. From W4eekly Avail, March 21-27, 1986. Reprinted by permission of ff'eeklv Alail, Johannesburg. Account b\ Samuel Dash. From New York Times Magazine, July 7, 1985. Copyright 0 1985 b\ The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. Account by Ahmed Kathrada, Elias Motsoaledi, and Walter Sisulu. From New York Times, October 19, 1989. Copyright 0 1989 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. Account b\ John Lofton and Cal Thomas. From Washington Times, August 22, 1985. Reprinted by permission of The Wiashington Times. Account by David McNicoll. Copyright 0 1973 by David McNicoll of Australian Consolidated Press. Reprinted by permission. Account by Seth Mazibuko. From Newsweek, June 23, 1986. Copyright © 1986 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Account by Dan Montsisi. From leek/i Mail, June 13-19, 1986. Article by Shaun Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Weekly Mail. Interview with Antony Heard. From Cape Times, November 4, 1985. Reprinted by permission. Interview with "Mac" Maharaj. From Nelson Mandela, The Struggle Is M' Life, 1978. Reprinted by permission of International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa. Passive Resistance in South Africa. From ed. J. A. Davis and J. K. Baker, Southern .4/rita in Transition, 1986. Reprinted by permission of Praeger Publishers, a division of Greenwood Press, Inc. Report of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group. From Mission to South Africa: The Commonwealth Report, 1986, published by Penguin Books (U.K.). Copyright 0 1986 Commonwealth Secretariat. Reprinted by permission. To all who have dedicated their lives to achieving democracy in South Africa Preface This book seeks to provide for its readers an understanding of the evolution of the struggle against apartheid, the aspirations and demands of the ANC and its leaders, the central issues in the discourse of African politics, and the role of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo in South African politics from the time of World War II. In the 1980s Nelson Mandela, the world's most famous political prisoner until his release on February 11, 1990, emerged as the central symbol of the intensified antiapartheid struggle in South Africa-despite his inability to speak directly to the public. It fell to Oliver Tambo, Mandela's longtime associate, who has been free to speak throughout his lengthy exile, to counterpoint Mandela's enforced silence in prison (until his release on February 11, 1990) with frequent articulation of the viewpoints of the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC, the political organization of which both men have been prominent leaders since the 1940s, has sustained its position as the preeminent political body challenging the white monopoly of political and economic power. The militancy of the 1980s had its roots in a struggle of more than four decades, with Mandela, Tambo, and the ANC at its heart. At the center of South African politics since 1948 has been the clash between the blacks' insistence on full participation in society and the whites' determination to retain power exclusively in their own hands. The intensity of the conflict has generated vigorous debates among Africans (and other South Africans) over the nature of an apartheid-free South Africa. Particularly salient issues have included defining democracy in the South African setting; arguing over whether full citizenship is to be limited to Africans only or open to all South Africans; questioning the fashion in which socialism might redress the inequalities engendered by more than a century of capitalist development; disputing whether the African struggle is primarily racial and national or essentially class based; determining the proper role of external support in a contest for power that remains essentially internal; developing tactics appropriate to the escalat- Preface ing violence and repression of the government; and assessing when and if negotiation can produce an acceptable resolution of the conflict. Mandela, Tambo, and the ANC have repeatedly addressed these issues before diverse audiences, both inside and outside South Africa and both before and since Mandela's imprisonment. They also set out these views in the documents that comprise the major part of this volume. Although we had decided on most of these documents by 1988, we also have included some from 1989, to reflect the continuity of the activity of the ANC and its leaders as well as their responses to developments focusing on the willingness of F. W. de Klerk, the new head of the National party government, to seek a dialogue with representatives of South Africa's black majority. The release of Nelson Mandela from prison, coupled with the unbanning of the ANC and other African political organizations, has initiated a new phase in the struggle against apartheid, thus providing a natural concluding point for this study. This book is not intended to be a complete and authoritative documentary collection of either ANC documents or the writings of Mandela and Tambo. Indeed, from among the vast corpus of ANC materials, this volume includes only those documents that have constituted touchstones for both challenging white supremacy and creating a nonracial South Africa. Likewise, the Tambo documents represent only a portion of the many statements he has made since circumstances beginning in the mid-1960s dictated that he become the prime spokesperson for the ANC in exile. In contrast, the Mandela documents presented in this book include most of those available, largely dating from before his sentence in 1964 of life imprisonment and the enforced silence that followed until he emerged from prison in 1990 to again become the foremost spokesperson of the African cause. Augmenting the few Mandela statements smuggled out of prison are recollections of fellow prisoners and reports of some of the few outsiders permitted to visit him before 1989; these recollections and reports illuminate his continued leadership in prison and his views on the direction the ANC should take. In many instances, only the pertinent sections of these documents have been reproduced, but the list of sources at the end of the book indicates where the complete document can be found. The documents are grouped into four sections, and within each section they are presented chronologically in the following order: writings and statements of Mandela, writings and statements of Tambo, documents of the ANC, recollections of fellow prisoners, and accounts of prison visitors. The first section covers the period between 1948 and 1960, in which the ANC mounted an increasingly militant, but still open and legal, challenge to apartheid. The second section deals with the period between 1960 and 1964, in which the ANC was banned, with its most prominent leaders either in prison or in exile. The ANC thus was compelled to reorient radically its methods of operation-from above ground to underground and exile and from nonviolence to selective violence. The third section focuses on the way in which Mandela since 1964 adapted his struggle to the conditions of prison. The last section considers the same post- 1964 period but concentrates on the activities of the exiled ANC and the post-1976 period in the country during which the underground ANC Preface reestablished an extensive presence amidst an unprecedented mobilization of antiapartheid resistance. Overcoming imprisonment and exile, both Mandela and Tambo took the spotlight in the 1980s as political figures central to any resolution of the South African crisis. In 1990, though, it has been Nelson Mandela who has occupied center stage since a stroke sidelined Oliver Tambo in August 1989. Preceding the documents of each section is an introductory essay that analyzes the pertinent developments of that period in order to place the documents in their proper context. A general introduction and a conclusion assessing continuity and change within the ANC provide a further overview of the period between 1948 and 1990.