Tom Lodge
THE ANC`s submission to the truth commission has commendable qualities. It is detailed, in some respects frank (for example in disclosing the names of people executed by the ANC’s intellegence operations), and it is often peruasively argued. But it is also too much of a lawyer’s defence rather than what it should be: a moral acknowledgement of the extent to which the organisation transgressed human rights.
The document makes a general claim that its strategic aim did not involve attacks on the civilian population which constituted the political base of the apartheid group. This is broadly true. The ANC’s attacks did kill civilians, sometimes intentionally so, but this was never an absolute requirement of the strategy it adopted.
The ANC contends that it took a principled stand against terrorism and that it avoided attacks on easy targets. This is less easy to sustain. It is true that on occasions the ANC argued against the use of terrorism, but it did not always criticise its cadres when they carried out attacks which had a principally terrorist function nor did they always disassociate the organisation and its leadership from such attacks.
Chapters three and four of the present evidence do sustain an argument that the ANC was involved in a just war — the chapters mainly detail human rights violations by various South African governments until 1994. I have no major objections either to the evidence or the argument. I think that the degree of repression which existed in 1961 was of such character that the ANC’s decision to embark upon armed rebellion was morally defensible
In chapter five the ANC argues that it consistently adopted a relatively restrained approach to the use of violence, that cadres were trained and disciplined to avoid or at least minimise civilian casusalties. Generally, this is convincing — there was plenty of evidence at the time that ANC cadres took precautions to avoid killing or hurting civilians, black and white.
Quotations from leadership statements are deployed to show how the ANC attempted to govern the conduct of its warfare — but it is not clear that the language had a restraining effect. It was often, as in the cases of some of the phraseology quoted here, rather unclear in its meaning and implications.
ANC rhetoric between 1985 and 1988 was susceptible to different interpretations. The document does not acknowledge the leadership’s responsibility sufficiently during this period for those attacks which did occur on soft targets.
The document deals in detail with a number of particular attacks that involved civilians. It justifies or explains some of the attacks which were ostensibly directed at soft targets in various ways: by referring to and defending the ANC’s understanding of what constituted a military target (Pretoria car bomb, rural landmines, Magoo’s bar); by blaming others on cadres panicking because they would not, if captured, be accorded prisoner-of-war status; and attributing other soft target attacks either on the state’s dirty tricks or on a context in which increasingly embittered cadres acted upon their own initiative (Amanzimtoti).
This part of the submission is too vague to be totally convincing. Between 1977 and 1989 at least 1 426 attacks were attributed to the ANC. Some indication of the precise scope and scale of ANC armed activity and the casualties it inflicted would be welcome: there is none here. Moreover there were some attacks on soft targets which were too well planned and too sophisticated to have merely been impulsive on the spot reactions by junior cadres to aparheid atrocities.
For example the 1988 Ellis Park car bomb, if mounted by the ANC, would have required the co-ordination of several units and fairly sophisticated technology. The document makes no mention of this incident. Are we to understand that it was an operation mounted by the authorities to discredit the ANC? Or was it sanctioned by the ANC’s chain of command? This is not an isolated example. Even at the cost of a longer submission more detail should have been provided.
The report contains a section on the activities of ANC-aligned self-defence units during the 1980s. It suggests that any crimes committed by such bodies were mainly the result of efforts by state agencies to subvert the ANC’s activities and discredit the organisation.
Certainly, as with the case mentioned in the report, the Phola Park SDU, this did happen — but are we to assume that all SDU misbehaviour was the consequence of “third force” conspiracies? Was not some the consequence of the propensity of badly trained and badly disciplined ANC supporters to bully people and exploit their relative power?
Some of these abuses were the result of police manipulation, but a lot of abuses committed by activists in the name of the ANC reflected a militarist sub-culture which the ANC itself did much to foster.
On abuse of human rights within the organisation, this document reproduces the findings of its own previous internal commissions of inquiry. Some people would argue that these commissions did not go far enough in identifying perpetrators of abuses.
The document says nothing about abuses in camps which may have taken place before the late 1970s, yet there were allegations of these from ANC defectors as early as 1968: if these can be refuted they should be.
The ANC says it consistently condemned the practise of necklacing. It did — but not immediately. Indeed, in some statements it appeared to give it some moral sanction. For example, Chris Hani in an interview to mark the 25th anniversary of Umkhonto (December16 1986) had this to say with reference to necklacing:
“It is not a weapon of the ANC. It is a weapon of the masses … I refuse to condemn our people when they mete out their own traditional form of justice to those who collaborate … The necklace has been used against those who have been actively collaborating with the enemy. We say the movement should be vigilant to ensure that whatever sentence is passed on anybody, it is as a result of participation by revolutionary elements of our struggle”.
The text in which these quotations appeared was published by the ANC and circulated widely.
In conclusion: in comparative terms — with reference to the general conduct of liberation wars in other parts of the world — the ANC fought a clean war. And if any armed rebellions are morally justifiable, the ANC`s decision to take up arms was certainly defensible.
It is a pity, though, that this document takes such pains to “contextualise” every abuse and violation of human rights committed by the organisation — at times this effort comes close to excusing the inexcusable. As a consequence the moral weight of this document is diminished.